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‘Stop All the Clocks: Elegy and Uncanny Technology'.

Mills, R., 2015. ‘Stop All the Clocks: Elegy and Uncanny Technology'. Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural, 1 (1), 35 -57.

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Abstract

I examine subjective representations of time and space in elegy from the 17thcentury to the 21stcentury, focusing on how ordinary objects affect the elegiac environment. I argue that the defamiliarising of technological devices by the elegist creates uncanny sites of contact with the world of the dead. Using elegies by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, W. H. Auden,SylviaPlath and Anne Carson, among others, I demonstrate a persistent motif of technological devices and scientific imagination in the genre. Stopping a clock interrupts the passage of time. Photographs create a static space where the past is present. The telephone allows connection to the dead. Studying the effects of these devices allows the interrogation of a critical narrative of shift from nature to science in the elegiac tradition, and the associated shift from healing to hopelessness, and emphasises the uncanny element of elegy and its impact on the space and time of mourning.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:2397-8791
Uncontrolled Keywords:literature; poetry; elegy; uncanny; technology; space; time; mechanism
Group:Faculty of Media & Communication
ID Code:31917
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:28 Feb 2019 09:36
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 14:15

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