eBook

Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore

Joanne Feit Diehl

1993

Overview

This highly innovative work on poetic influence among women writers focuses on the relationship between modernist poet Elizabeth Bishop and her mentor Marianne Moore. Departing from Freudian models of influence theory that ignore the question of maternal presence, Joanne Diehl applies the psychoanalytic insights of object relations theorists Melanie Klein and Christopher Bollas to woman-to-woman literary transactions. She lays the groundwork for a far-reaching critical approach as she shows that Bishop, mourning her separation from her natural mother, strives to balance gratitude toward Moore, her literary mother, with a potentially disabling envy. Diehl begins by exploring Bishop's memoir of Moore, \"Efforts of Affection,\" as an attempt by Bishop to verify Moore's uniqueness in order to defend herself against her predecessor's almost overwhelming originality. She then offers an intertextual reading of the two writers' works that inquires into Bishop's ambivalence toward Moore. In an analysis of \"Crusoe in England\" and \"In the Village,\" Diehl exposes the restorative impulses that fuel aesthetic creation and investigates how Bishop thematizes an understanding of literary production as a process of psychic compensation.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Subject: 20th century / Acolyte / Affection / Allegory / Allusion / Alternative model / Ambivalence / American poetry / American poetry -- Women authors -- History and criticism / Anecdote / Authorship / Authorship -- Sex differences / Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911-1979 / Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911-1979 -- Criticism and interpretation / Caesura / Christopher Bollas / Circumlocution / Conflation / Consciousness / Contemporary society / Creative ability / Criticism / Criticism and interpretation / Determination / Diction / Digression / Elizabeth Bishop / Emily Dickinson / Exemplum / Explanation / Externalization / Feminism / Feminism and literature / Feminism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century / Feminist poetry, American / Foray / Gentlewoman / Gratitude / Hermeneutics / History / History and criticism / Hyperbole / Imagination / In Parenthesis / Indication (medicine) / Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) / Injunction / Juliet Mitchell / Language & Literature / LITERARY CRITICISM / LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry / Marianne Moore / Maternal deprivation / Melanie Klein / Memoir / Modernism / Modernism (Literature) / Modernism (Literature) -- United States / Moore, Marianne, 1887-1972 / Moore, Marianne, 1887-1972 -- Criticism and interpretation / Mother / Mourning / Mrs / Mutability (poem) / Narrative / Object relations theory / Obscurantism / Oedipus complex / Originality / Our Choice / Pangolin / Persona / Poetry / Poets, American / Prose / Psychoanalysis / Psychoanalysis and literature / Psychodynamics / Psychological aspects / Psychology / Ralph Waldo Emerson / Robert Bridges / Robert Lowell / Sandra Gilbert / Scrupulosity / Self-Reliance / Sestina / Sex differences / Stanza / Subjectivity / Suggestion / Susan Gubar / Theory / Thought / Understanding / Uniqueness / United States / Virginia Woolf / Women and literature / Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century / Women authors / Women poets, American / Women poets, American -- 20th century -- Psychology
• ISBN: 9780691069753, 0691069751, 9781400820863, 1400820863