Burying language: Elegy in the works of Kevin Young, Anne Tardos, and Kenneth Goldsmith

The aim of this thesis is to explore elegiac language's relation to psychological mourning in three recent texts by contemporary American poets. Using the framework of Jean-Pierre Vernant's 1965 essay "The Figuration of the Invisible and the Psychological Category of the Double: The Kolossos" as a critical lens, the central concern driving this thesis is how elegy (and language more broadly) can serve as a substituted double for the absent dead in the manner of the kolossos. To investigate this idea, Kevin Young's Dear Darkness: Poems (Knopf, 2008), Anne Tardos's I Am You (Salt Publishing, 2008), and Kenneth Goldsmith's Seven American Deaths and Disasters (PowerHouse, 2013) provide a cross-section of contemporary elegy, each showcasing varied aspects of psychological mourning in poetry.