Search results for "wordscapes"

Derek Mahon's Literal Littorals

2012

International audience; A transversal reading of Derek Mahon's poems reveals his predilection for coastal landscapes: vistas of sea and seashore, harbour towns or seaside resorts. Suffused as they are with elemental symbolism (waves, wind, rain and storm, rocks, cliffs and misty piers), those liminal spaces take on a metaphysical dimension. The landscapes that the poet invests are the objective correlatives of his sense of alienation and vulnerability; they are mindscapes (paesagio mentale or reflections of the inner self) as much as territories to be paced and explored. This paper thus examines how the natural and the urban, the visual and the acoustic, the a-temporal and the modern or pos…