Institutions and Elegies: viewing the dead in W.B. Yeats and John Wieners

Sheils, Barry; Walsh, Julie

Abstract

In this chapter we ask how poetic elegy encodes the modern institutional spaces of dying. But rather than visiting the hospital ward, we consider this at one remove, from the perspective of another modern institution where the aesthetic, natural-scientific as well as political dimensions of the relation between the living and the dead are made apparent: namely, the museum gallery. In addition to pointing out the structural similarity between the public spaces of the hospital ward and the art museum, and acknowledging their historical status as imperial institutions, we make a claim for their importance to a modern elegiac consciousness. More specifically, we turn to the examples of W.B. Yeats and John Wieners as two poets for whom the gallery affords the most vital occasion for encountering the dead. This is a study of poetic influence, yet it is also a study that allows us to move from questions of personal style to impersonal and institutionally framed modes of transmission.

Citation

Sheils, B., & Walsh, J. (2020). Institutions and Elegies: viewing the dead in W.B. Yeats and John Wieners. In W. Wang, D. Jerrigan, & N. Murphy (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature (190-206). Routledge

• Online Publication Date: Dec 21, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Jan 5, 2022
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 190-206
• Book Title: The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature
• Keywords: Queer elegy; art galleries; emphasis; cruising; John Wieners; Leo Bersani
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1623191
• Publisher URL: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Death-and-Literature/Wang-Jernigan-Murphy/p/book/9780367619015?gclid=Cj0KCQiAxc6PBhCEARIsAH8Hff3kBH7KY8Japx4hbD69LqzmHUiiX8cbmB69Bx5XC9tiK_wvS7J4wBAaAg-PEALw_wcB
• Contract Date: Dec 19, 2019