Metaliterary Katabasis in the Writings of Eavan Boland, Derek Walcott and Gloria Naylor: The Poet and the Underworld (Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception)

Focusing on the ancient motif of the descent into the underworld (katabasis), this book examines how three twentieth-century writers - Eavan Boland, Gloria Naylor and Derek Walcott - articulate their poetics and assert their place within the Western literary canon by means of receptions of this motif from Greco-Roman literature.This study examines three key texts published between 1985 and 1990, exploring how these writers - an Irish poet, an African-American novelist and a Caribbean poet - employ the allegorical motif of katabasis as a metaliterary instrument.Each text is analysed for its receptions of katabasis and its implications for the literary identities of these three authors. Amaranth Feuth also situates these texts within the broader context of each author’s oeuvre, providing fresh, in-depth analyses of related texts.Utilising the methodological framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and transgeneric narratology, this study compares the deployment of katabasis across d