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 83
... head still petrifies , turns men to stone and indeed this petrification occu- pies an important place in the poem . But in Shelley's poem , the head itself , while marked by death , has a curious life of its own . Although it is a ...
... head still petrifies , turns men to stone and indeed this petrification occu- pies an important place in the poem . But in Shelley's poem , the head itself , while marked by death , has a curious life of its own . Although it is a ...
Page 84
... head when representing a woman's genitals , Freud announces defensively that the erect male organ also has an apotropaic effect . Commenting on Freud's essay , Marjorie Garber notes : ' The desire to write the female first as castration ...
... head when representing a woman's genitals , Freud announces defensively that the erect male organ also has an apotropaic effect . Commenting on Freud's essay , Marjorie Garber notes : ' The desire to write the female first as castration ...
Page 85
Bearing Blindness Catherine Maxwell. their heads at the hands or influence of a woman ) . 100 If the image of a severed male head speaks of a castration carried out on a male victim , the severed Medusa head graphically images the threat ...
Bearing Blindness Catherine Maxwell. their heads at the hands or influence of a woman ) . 100 If the image of a severed male head speaks of a castration carried out on a male victim , the severed Medusa head graphically images the threat ...
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