Andrew Koenig

Bio

Andrew Koenig holds a PhD in English from Harvard University, where he is Course Director for Humanities 10, a literature and philosophy program for first-year students. His dissertation, “Reparative, Resentful, Queer, Parasitic: Varieties of Rewriting, 1900–Present,” looks at practices of rewriting and revision in the work of three British modernists (D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf) as well as their reception among contemporary novelists.

Contributions

Striking out in a New Direction: Elegy and the Sustaining Cross-out

Peer Reviewed

Print Plus Exclusive

Here, I propose that the cross-out ( like so), in its simultaneous attempt to erase and preserve a word, models a form of elegy that does justice to the traumatic past while enabling narrative progression. It is a mode of repair rather than despair. Virginia Woolf, with her penchant for the cross-out, sets an example for two contemporary elegists: poet-essayist Anne Carson and novelist-critic Namwali Serpell. All three look to the cross-out as an alternative to conventionally male forms of elegy...

Tags:

elegy text