Transforming texts : adaptation and ekphrasis in the poetry of Derek Mahon and Paul Muldoon.

This thesis will explore the historical inheritance and use of adaptation and
ekphrasis in the poetry of Derek Mahon and Paul Muldoon. Both poets include
other texts in their work to perpetuate dialogues on history, aesthetics and poetic
form, using images, symbols and formal structures to question what poetry can or
should do. Looking at the revisionary power of language this thesis will turn to
examples of adaptation and revision in the work of each poet. In the poetry of
Mahon, it will show how ekphrasis engages with questions of history and
aesthetics through the relationship between visual and verbal forms. The result is
a poetry that develops temporal and spatial qualities connected to the poet's sense
of self and to his philosophical and intellectual concerns for poetry. In his later
collections, ekphrasis contributes to Mahon' s metaphysical landscapes as they
resist the symbolic or unified vision of cultural archetypes to focus on the 'harsh
realities' of a contemporary world at war. In the poetry of Muldoon, the visual
and verbal components of language develop a conscious boundary between the
image and the ideological and historical dialogues that surround it. Muldoon
develops stories out of objects that establish a dialogue on the formal qualities of
language and of the poet's relation to it. His poetry self-consciously engages with
the structural and conceptual problems of representation, adapting the ideas of
philosophers, writers and poets to develop a poetry that expresses what it cannot
state. His resistant form demonstrates a responsibility to both himself and the
present time in which he is writing.