Browsing by Subject "Pain in literature"

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    The Palliation of Poetry: Expressing the Pain-Language Relationship in Theory and in Language
    (2024) McMillan, Olivia; Benston, Kimberly W.
    My thesis explores pain and its ostensible rejection of language. What makes pain notably difficult to properly express are its concurrent physical and mental elements. Existing on both literal and abstract planes of experience, posing a challenge to being captured in its entirety. Consequently, the pain experience is often left unarticulated by the sufferer and unheard by others. I argue that, although seemingly unable to adhere to words, pain can be captured by an alternative to normative language. I accomplish this by first presenting a well-established terrain of the pain-language relationship assembled by various literary critics. The two most significant poles emerge in this discourse: poetic language and diagnostic language. Diagnostic language aims to define pain in an objective, quantitative manner in order to come to a conclusive medical hypothesis and subsequent treatment. Poetic language, by contrast, is the abstractive yet also subjective means by which internal feelings are expressed through the use of metaphors, allusions, and other figurative devices. I assert that poetic language is best equipped for the task of wholly articulating pain expression due to its capacity to capture the physical aspects of pain while also expressing its abstract qualities, thereby not limiting a sufferer’s experience. I accomplish this with the assistance of various literary materials. First, I draw on critical essays, meditations, and cultural critiques written by modern critics from Virginia Woolf to Susan Sontag. Finally, close readings of pain poetry by Emily Dickinson demonstrate the efficacy of poetic language as a vehicle for pain expression.
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