The Elegiac Tradition and the Imagined Geography of the Sea and the Shore

This article investigates the prevalence of the sea and the seashore in the elegiac tradition from a geocritical perspective, including poems by John Milton, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Lowell, Carolyn Kizer, Sylvia Plath, and Elizabeth Bishop. I draw attention to the prevalence and recurrence of oceanic and littoral topographies in elegies from both Britain and America, and from different periods, in order to demonstrate a geography-based continuity within the tradition and genre, thereby challenging and developing popular critical narratives of shift and rupture in the heritage of elegy. By extension, I illustrate the relevance of geocriticism to poetry, specifically in the investigation of elegiac strategies connected to the drawing of cartographies of imagination, emotion and memory. Focusing on the elegiac seashore— in particular Plath’s “Berck-Plage” and Bishop’s “North Haven,” in addition to the cultural imaginary of the ocean that they draw upon—enables the connection of specific perspectives on death and loss to specific kinds of spatial imaginations.