Book contents
- The Cambridge History of American Poetry
- The Cambridge History of American Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: Poetry before 1800
- Chapter 1 Remembering Muskrat
- Chapter 2 Rhyming Empires
- Chapter 3 The World, the Flesh, and God in Puritan Poetry
- Chapter 4 Confronting Death
- Chapter 5 The Emergence of a Southern Tradition
- Chapter 6 Poetry in the Time of Revolution
- Part II A New Nation: Poetry from 1800 to 1900
- Part III Forms of Modernism, 1900–1950
- Part IV Beyond Modernism: American Poetry, 1950–2000
- Selected Bibliographies
- Index
Chapter 4 - Confronting Death
The New England Puritan Elegy
from Part I - Beginnings: Poetry before 1800
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2014
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of American Poetry
- The Cambridge History of American Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: Poetry before 1800
- Chapter 1 Remembering Muskrat
- Chapter 2 Rhyming Empires
- Chapter 3 The World, the Flesh, and God in Puritan Poetry
- Chapter 4 Confronting Death
- Chapter 5 The Emergence of a Southern Tradition
- Chapter 6 Poetry in the Time of Revolution
- Part II A New Nation: Poetry from 1800 to 1900
- Part III Forms of Modernism, 1900–1950
- Part IV Beyond Modernism: American Poetry, 1950–2000
- Selected Bibliographies
- Index
Summary
Benjamin Franklin's parodic ingredients summarize the artistic failings of the Puritan elegy as post-Enlightenment critics have defined them. The paradox of observing a death in time by invoking the supposed timelessness of art helps explain why critics have never known quite what to do with occasional poems like elegies. Most elegists during sixteenth century took an approach to verbal mourning that drew on Elizabethan patriotism and patronage and, later, Jacobean melancholy and popular devotional traditions. The New England elegy began to separate from its English counterparts by laying greater stress on the commemoration of what William Scheick has called a collective self that enabled survivors to absorb the deceased's piety. With social and political themes pervading the full range of elegiac verse, the chief distinction in American elegy became and largely remains between poems designed for popular audiences and those written for a more traditionally literary readership.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of American Poetry , pp. 86 - 108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014