Alas, for the tropics of Elizabeth Bishop

Abstract

Recent scholarship on Elizabeth Bishop's works considers mostly discrete deliberations of her life and writing, or concentrates on new and expanded editions of her writing. In addition, much contemporary criticism on Bishop has been preoccupied with responding to Alice Quinn's 'Edgar Allan Poe and the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments'. Because of this new focus, Bishop criticism has neglected equally necessary studies on the author's original work. Through close examinations of 'Questions of Travel', Bishop's diary translation 'The Diary of "Helena Morley,"' and the Brazilian writing of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Elizabeth Bishop, this project revivifies contemporary Bishop scholarship by focusing on the multiple, significant impacts the country and people of Brazil had on Elizabeth Bishop and her work.