Back to Search
Start Over
The Poetics of (Un)Mournability: Emma Donoghue's Hood (1995) as an Elegy in Invisible Ink.
- Source :
- Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik; Mar2024, Vol. 72 Issue 1, p23-34, 12p
- Publication Year :
- 2024
-
Abstract
- Emma Donoghue's Hood is an Irish tale of closeted lesbian love in which the narrator cannot mourn the death of her partner publicly because of the compulsory social invisibility of their relationship. While in her monograph Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? Judith Butler correlates the (un)grievability of certain lives (their ability to be grieved over) with ethical frames of perception, this paper focuses on the invisibilisation of public mourning. Since the term "mourning" is often used to evoke public displays and rituals of grief, I propose to confront Butler's concept of "(un)grievability" with what I call "(un)mournability," in order to investigate the three metaphors of (in)visibility that shape the aesthetics of Donoghue's contemporary narrative elegy. The images of the closet, the hood, and the invisible ink, which are instrumental to Donoghue's narrative strategies of linguistic invisibility, map out the evolving representation of lesbian invisibility in the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- BEREAVEMENT
LESBIANISM
SOCIAL marginality
POETICS
METAPHOR
INK
NARRATION
ELEGIAC poetry
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00442305
- Volume :
- 72
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 175943524
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2041