Medea's Chorus : Myth and Women's Poetry Since 1950.
Title:
Medea's Chorus : Myth and Women's Poetry Since 1950.
Author:
House, Veronica.
ISBN:
9781453909386
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (192 pages)
Series:
Studies in Modern Poetry ; v.19
Studies in Modern Poetry
Contents:
Cover -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The High Modernist Homeric Return -- Women Writers' Call to Re-Action -- Chapter One: H.D.'s Revision of Kleos Culture in Helen In Egypt -- H.D.'s Mythic Mirror -- Helen's Multiple Personalities -- "There is a voice within me": Helen's Reconciled Identity -- "A challenge . . . to all song forever": A Different Kind of Glory -- Chapter Two: Sylvia Plath's Complex Electra -- The Myth of Real Life -- Electra's and Clytemnestra's Ancient Pasts -- "Father, bridegroom": Plath's Tragic Identification -- "Too nice for murder": Plath's Tragic Failure -- Chapter Three: The Mysteries of Adrienne Rich's Radical Feminism in The Dream of a Common Language -- The Book of Myths -- Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Eleusinian Mysteries -- "Old Songs With New Words": Adrienne Rich's Eleusis -- "Cutting-away of an old force": Rich's Rejection of Classical Mythology -- Chapter Four: Margaret Atwood's Transformed Circe -- Living on the Margins -- The Origins of the Stereotypes -- "Escaped from these mythologies?": Heroic Transformations -- The True Story in the Book of Myths: Atwood's Dive into Rich's Wreck -- Chapter Five: Eavan Boland's Aging Earth Mother -- Theories of Myth and Aging -- "What great art removes": Ephemeral and Fixed Bodies -- "Words I can grow old and die in": A Menopausal Ceres -- "Take something and break it": No More Mythologies -- Conclusion -- "That Stranger Was Myself!": Identification With the Other -- Notes -- Introduction -- Chapter one: H.D.'s Revision of Kleos Culture in Helen In Egypt -- Chapter two: Sylvia Plath's Complex Electra -- Chapter three: The Mysteries of Adrienne Rich's Radical Feminism in The Dream of a Common Language -- Chapter four: Margaret Atwood's Transformed Circe -- Chapter five: Eavan Boland's Aging Earth Mother -- Bibliography -- Index.
Abstract:
Women's mythic revision is a tradition at the heart of twentieth-century literature. Medea's Chorus explores post-WWII women's poetry that takes Greek mythology as its central topos. The book investigates five of the most influential poets writing in the twentieth century (H.D., Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Margaret Atwood, Eavan Boland) who challenge both the ancient literary representations of women and the high modernist appropriations of the classics. In their poetry and prose, the women engage with cultural discourses about literary authority, gender, oppression, violence, and age. Yet even while the poets rework certain aspects of the Greek myths that they find troubling, they see the inherent power in the stories and use that power for personal and social revelation. Because myths exist in multiple versions, ancient writers did not create from scratch; their artistic contribution lay in how they changed the stories. Modern female poets are engaging in a several millennia-old tradition of mythic revision, a tradition that has ruthlessly posited that there is no place for women in the creation and transmission of mythological poetry. Medea's Chorus tracks mythic revision from the 1950s through the second-wave feminist movement and into turn-of-the-century feminism to highlight individual achievements and to show the collective effect of the poets' highly varied works on post-WWII literature and feminist thought and practice. This engaging and beautifully written book is a must-read for any student, teacher, or scholar of the Classical Tradition, revisionist mythmaking, and twentieth-century poetry.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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