Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore: The Psychodynamics of Creativity

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.

1114229952
Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore: The Psychodynamics of Creativity

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.

17.99 In Stock
Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore: The Psychodynamics of Creativity

Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore: The Psychodynamics of Creativity

by Joanne Feit Diehl
Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore: The Psychodynamics of Creativity

Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore: The Psychodynamics of Creativity

by Joanne Feit Diehl

eBookCourse Book (Course Book)

$17.99  $29.95 Save 40% Current price is $17.99, Original price is $29.95. You Save 40%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781400820863
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 04/05/1993
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 140
File size: 210 KB

About the Author

Joanne Feit Diehl is Henry Hill Pierce Professor of English at Bowdoin College. She is author of Dickinson and the Romantic Imagination (Princeton) and Women Poets and the American Sublime (Indiana).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Muse's Monogram 3
Ch. 1 "Efforts of Affection": Toward a Theory of Female Poetic Influence 10
Ch. 2 Reading Bishop Reading Moore 49
Ch. 3 The Memory of Desire and the Landscape of Form: Reading Bishop through Object-Relations Theory 85
Conclusion: Object Relations, Influence, and the Woman Poet 106
Notes 111
Index 117

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews