Post-Contemporary Interventions
[1994]
Details
- Autor(en) / Beteiligte
- Titel
- Laura : Uncovering Gender and Genre in Wyatt, Donne and Marvell
- Ist Teil von
- Post-Contemporary Interventions
- Ort / Verlag
- Durham : Duke University Press
- Erscheinungsjahr
- [1994]
- Link zum Volltext
- Link zu anderen Inhalten
- Beschreibungen/Notizen
- How do men imagine women? In the poetry of Petrarch and his English successors—Wyatt, Donne, and Marvell—the male poet persistently imagines pursuing a woman, Laura, whom he pursues even as she continues to deny his affections. Critics have long held that, in objectifying Laura, these male-authored texts deny the imaginative, intellectual, and physical life of the woman they idealize. In Laura, Barbara L. Estrin counters this traditional view by focusing not on the generative powers of the male poet, but on the subjectivity of the imagined woman and the imaginative space of the poems she occupies.Through close readings of the Rime sparse and the works of Wyatt, Donne, and Marvell, Estrin uncovers three Lauras: Laura-Daphne, who denies sexuality; Laura-Eve, who returns the poet’s love; and Laura-Mercury, who reinvents her own life. Estrin claims that in these three guises Laura subverts both genre and gender, thereby introducing multiple desires into the many layers of the poems. Drawing upon genre and gender theories advanced by Jean-François Lyotard and Judith Butler to situate female desire in the poem’s framework, Estrin shows how genre and gender in the Petrarchan tradition work together to undermine the stability of these very concepts.Estrin’s Laura constitutes a fundamental reconceptualization of the Petrarchan tradition and contributes greatly to the postmodern reassessment of the Renaissance period. In its descriptions of how early modern poets formulate questions about sexuality, society and poetry, Laura will appeal to scholars of the English and Italian Renaissance, of gender studies, and of literary criticism and theory generally
- Sprache
- Englisch
- Identifikatoren
- ISBN: 9780822382256DOI: 10.1515/9780822382256Titel-ID: 990369895940206441
- Format
- 1 online resource (360 p.); 3 illustrations
- Schlagworte
- English poetry / Italian influences, English poetry / Early modern, 1500-1700 / History and criticism, Literary form / History / 16th century, Literary form / History / 17th century, Love poetry, English / Male authors / History and criticism, Sex role in literature, Women and literature / England / History / 16th century, Women and literature / England / History / 17th century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry