The Melancholic Persona in Susan Evance’s Sonnet To Melancholy

Abstract

This paper analyses the sonnet To Melancholy by the English Romantic writer Susan Evance in terms of the representation of the melancholic mind of the authorial persona. The study suggests that the implied author experiences melancholy as a form of mood state rather than a type of disorder or disease peculiar to the melancholic writers of the present and the past. Therefore, the author applies melancholy as a creative instrument and poetic inspiration in the narrative of the poem and a principal way to self-actualize as a Romantic writer. The literary representation of a melancholic mood thus causes the authorial persona to melancholize deliberately not only for her own sake, but also for the sake of both implied and historical readerships. With the aim of realizing her artistic potential, the poetic persona withdraws from the other and rejects society, experiencing a deliberate melancholy detachment for aesthetic reasons and a literary concern. This causes the subjective experience of melancholic suffering to turn out to be a social problem rather than simply a personal issue. Using the terminology of Julia Kristeva and Karen Horney, the paper analyses melancholy as a textual mode and a transient mood that removes self-estrangement but brings about social alienation.