The Night-Death binomial as a poetic ploy - a cross-cultural look from the graveyard poets to expressionism
The essay describes the use of the Night-Death binomial and tracks its evolution from the eighteenth century to Expressionism across Great Britain, Germany, Spain, and Austria, at the hand of poems such as Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1745), Novalis’s Hymnen an die Nacht, (1800), José Blanco White...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
2015-11-01
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| Series: | Aletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura |
| Online Access: | http://www.periodicos.letras.ufmg.br/index.php/aletria/article/view/8240 |
| Summary: | The essay describes the use of the Night-Death binomial and tracks its evolution from the eighteenth century to Expressionism across Great Britain, Germany, Spain, and Austria, at the hand of poems such as Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1745), Novalis’s Hymnen an die Nacht, (1800), José Blanco White’s sonnet “Night and Death” (1828), and Georg Trakl’s “Verwandlung des Bösen” (1914). Romanticism brought along a preference for the nocturnal: night, moonlight, shades and shadows, mist and mystery, somber mood, morbidity, and death, as opposed to the Enlightenment’s predilection for day, light, clarity, and life. The essay analyses how poets from different national contexts and ages employ images and symbols of the night to create an association with death. It furthermore shows how, with varying attitudes and results, they manage to convert this binomial into a poetic ploy. |
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| ISSN: | 1679-3749 2317-2096 |