ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. It proposes that accounting fully for testimonial poems entails a shift in emphasis from the way in which we read other forms of poetry, just as prose testimony demands a different response to fiction. The variety of contexts in which poetry functions as testimony illustrates that testimonial discourse has flourished in post-literate countries since the beginning of the twentieth century. The book is open to an implication of Felman and Laub's book that testimony functions primarily as a work of autonomous art, as opposed to more recent instances of testimony in the form of victim statements in the legal process, patient responses in clinical practice, and the advent of 'mis lit'. Testimonial poetry demands a historical metanarrative, and Morris's poem forms no exception with its gestural title.
