The Poetry Of Mourning In Selected Poems By Walt Whitman And Lounes Matoub: A Comparative Study

Résumé: This dissertation is a comparative study of selected poems of mourning ―O Captain! My Captain!‖ (1865) and ―When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom‘d‖ (1865) by Walt Whitman, and ―Hymn to Boudiaf‖ (1993) and ―Kenza‖(1994) by Lounes Matoub. The main purpose of this study is to demonstrate that poems from different cultural identity could share affinities. Adopting Norman Fairclough‘s approach to Textual Analysis, explained in the first chapter, this research paper has attempted to analyse the forms and the contents of the poems referring to their socio-historical and political backgrounds. The two poets have dealt with poetry of mourning to grieve national figures with revising their respective traditional forms of mourning, which yielded a disconnection from the English elegy and the Kabyle dikr. The second chapter has attempted to analyse Whitman‘s elegies in their formal and contextual frame. The third chapter has endeavoured to provide a close reading of Matoub‘s poems in relation to history and to his political commitment. The last chapter has discussed the poets‘ use of the poetry of mourning, then puts the poems into a comparative perspective. The results of the comparative study demonstrate that both Whitman and Matoub intentionally deviate from their respective traditional poetry of mourning , to create innovative poetic forms, which carry out their militant ideas about history and politics.

Publié dans la revue: