The Female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne: Bearing BlindnessThis innovative study of vision, gender and poetry traces Milton's mark on Shelley, Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne to show how the lyric male poet achieves vision at the cost of symbolic blindness and feminisation. Drawing together a wide range of concerns including the use of myth, the gender of the sublime, the lyric fragment, and the relation of pain to creativity, this book is a major re-evaluation of the male poet and the making of the English poetic tradition.The female sublime from Milton to Swinburne examines the feminisation of the post-Miltonic male poet, not through cultural history, but through a series of mythic or classical figures which include Philomela, Orpheus and Sappho. It recovers a disfiguring sublime imagined as an aggressive female force which feminises the male poet in an act that simultaneously deprives and energises him. This book will be required reading for anyone with a serious interest in the English poetic tradition and Victorian poetry. |
From inside the book
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Page 89
... emotions enacted in the outbursts of tragic heroes call up similar emotions in those watching or listening and thus can be considered contaminating . Plato is alarmed by the possibility that , as auditors and spectators , we will , in ...
... emotions enacted in the outbursts of tragic heroes call up similar emotions in those watching or listening and thus can be considered contaminating . Plato is alarmed by the possibility that , as auditors and spectators , we will , in ...
Page 92
... emotions , thus setting up the idea of a reaction to physical stimuli . The sublime is a response to terror or ... emotions . But almost immediately there occurs an interesting slippage as he moves from con- sidering the fluency of her ...
... emotions , thus setting up the idea of a reaction to physical stimuli . The sublime is a response to terror or ... emotions . But almost immediately there occurs an interesting slippage as he moves from con- sidering the fluency of her ...
Page 101
... emotions : ' Corinne made the spectators feel what she was feeling.'53 As we have seen earlier , the strong emotional identification induced by poetry is one of the things which makes Plato's Socrates mistrust it . This fear of the con ...
... emotions : ' Corinne made the spectators feel what she was feeling.'53 As we have seen earlier , the strong emotional identification induced by poetry is one of the things which makes Plato's Socrates mistrust it . This fear of the con ...
Contents
Orpheus Sappho and the feminised | 11 |
Milton and Shelley | 47 |
from Sappho to Satan | 88 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
The Female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne: Bearing Blindness Catherine Maxwell Limited preview - 2001 |
The Female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne: Bearing Blindness Catherine Maxwell No preview available - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
appears associated beauty becomes bird blindness body Browning Browning's called castration chapter claim classical critics dark death describes desire disfiguration dream early effect Elizabeth Barrett Browning emotions English Essays experience expression eyes face female sublime feminine figure follow fragment gender head hermaphrodite ideal identified identity imagination influence inspiration John language later less Letters light lines literary London look loss lyric male male poet mark masculine means Medusa Milton muse myth nature nightingale notes original Orpheus pain painting Paradise Lost passion poem poet poet's poetic poetry present readers references reflection relation represents Romantic Sappho scene seems seen sense sexual Shelley Shelley's shows sight song sonnet speaker spirit Studies suggests Swinburne Swinburne's symbolic takes Tennyson things thought tion Tiresias tradition turns University Press verse Victorian vision voice woman women writing York