The ethics of mourning: Elegiac response in the works of Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Doty, Paul Muldoon and Jorie Graham

This dissertation examines a series of poems that attempt to do the work of mourning while remaining responsive to ethical concerns. Each of the twentieth-century poets in this study approaches the task of elegizing loss in unique and interesting ways. While much critical attention has focused on the Freudian trajectory of elegiac poetry, I read these poems as attempts to explore an openness to otherness in the face of loss. These poets eschew the genre's conventional reach for consolation, turning instead toward an acceptance of the unknown. My readings are influenced by Levinas' and Derrida's texts on ethical relations and responsiveness, which provide a critical vocabulary for a discussion of self-other relations and ethical response.; In Chapter One, I examine the connections Bishop forges between particular losses and the ineffable. In her poems, Bishop charges readers with the task of learning to accept the lack of tenable answers to questions about loss. I read her poetic responses to loss as moments of openness to the unknown. In Chapter Two, I consider the anticipatory elegies of Mark Doty's Atlantis. These poems address the ethics involved in taking aesthetic redress from loss. I argue that Doty's focus on description and aesthetic beauty can be seen as a form of ethical response to loss. In Chapter Three, I turn to Paul Muldoon's work, and particularly to his long poem, “Incantata,” an elegy for a former love. Muldoon's poems, while more traditionally elegiac than the poems of Bishop or Doty, suggest some of the difficulties involved in responding to loss. In “Incantata,” he explores the ethics of resisting the desire to make the other speak. I conclude, in Chapter Four, with Jorie Graham's considerations of the limits of knowledge as an elegiac endeavor. In her work, loss is presented as a consequence of the encounter with these limits. Thus my project examines the ways that these twentieth century poets turn from ideas of consolation and tropes of mourning to consider the relation between self and other.