2013
First Published
4.20
Average Rating
160
Number of Pages
In Dying Modern, one of our foremost literary critics inspires new ways to read, write, and talk about poetry. Diana Fuss does so by identifying three distinct but largely unrecognized voices within the well-studied genre of the elegy: the dying voice, the reviving voice, and the surviving voice. Through her deft readings of modern poetry, Fuss unveils the dramatic within the elegiac: the dying diva who relishes a great deathbed scene, the speaking corpse who fancies a good haunting, and the departing lover who delights in a dramatic exit.Focusing primarily on American and British poetry written during the past two centuries, Fuss maintains that poetry can still offer genuine ethical compensation, even for the deep wounds and shocking banalities of modern death. As dying, loss, and grief become ever more thoroughly obscured from public view, the dead start chattering away in verse. Through bold, original interpretations of little-known works, as well as canonical poems by writers such as Emily Dickinson, Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wright, and Sylvia Plath, Fuss explores modern poetry's fascination with pre- and postmortem speech, pondering the literary desire to make death speak in the face of its cultural silencing.
Avg Rating
4.20
Number of Ratings
25
5 STARS
36%
4 STARS
56%
3 STARS
4%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
4%
goodreads
Author
Diana Fuss
Author · 8 books
Diana Fuss, Louis W. Fairchild Class of ’24 Professor of English, has taught at Princeton since 1988, after receiving her PhD from Brown University in English and Semiotics. She has taught undergraduate courses on a range of topics in the areas of criticism and theory, 19th and 20th century American and British literature, narrative and poetry, and film and media. And she has taught more specialized graduate offerings on such subjects as Body Parts, Architectural Interiors, The Senses, Contemporary Theory, Freud’s Toolbox, American Elegy, Modern Death, Modern Love, and Keywords. She has also conducted the graduate pedagogy and dissertation seminars. In 2001 Fuss received the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and she currently holds the University’s Cotsen Fellowship for Distinguished Research and Teaching.
