Burn, Andrew R. et al. “Introduction”. Lyrics in the Original Greek, translated by. Willis Barnstone, New York University Press, 1965, p. xvii - xxxi.
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955 results Responses with attribute Gendered response:Yes
Sappho
They treat a range of topics, from mythical and religious subjects, through satiric commentary and praise of beauty, to expressions of erotic desire. The cult of Aphrodite allowed poems to be simultaneously religious and erotic, in a manner surprising to an untrained modern reader. Translator
notes pertinently that love-poems by male Greek poets are normally addressed to other men. The poems use a range of metres; an ancient critic wrote a whole treatise on them. Best-known is the one which English calls Sapphics, a rapid, incantatory rhythm whose stanzas end abruptly in a short line. This verse-form has been attempted memorably but seldom in the English language, which arguably is not fitted to it.
deals with every kind of love situation (longing, absence, jealousy, consummation) and achieves great intensity and immediacy, quite apart from the punchy effect inadvertently added when her lines are fragmentary. To achieve these effects she famously employs vivid imagery and a quasi-medical vocabulary to describe uncontrollable bodily responses. In a poem only recently discovered she laments, and then to some degree accepts, the different bodily changes brought about by age. In a translation by
: Knees / which once danced quick as deer / can't carry me.
suggests that this poem expresses, surprisingly, a sense of the irrelevance of gender. It seems that further additions to Sappho's canon—in themselves by no means improbable—are likely to expand our sense of her capacity and poetic reach.
Sapphics have been written in English by several poets, famously by
and
, non-famously by
.
Hildegarde of Bingen
In 1227,
initiated proceedings to canonize HB. The proceedings were halted in 1243 and an appeal, made in 1998, to complete HB's canonization was ignored by
.
Marie de France
Having been influential for a couple of centuries after her period of activity, MF re-entered modern literary consciousness with a late-eighteenth-century critical work by
, translated into English under the auspices of the
in 1796 as Dissertation on the Life and Writings of Mary, an Anglo-Norman Poetess of the 13th century. She has never been forgotten since that time, but her reputation received a boost in seriousness from
in The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, 1964. Lewis cites Marie as exhibiting the central virtues of the medieval period. Her writing is so limpid and effortless that the story seems to be telling itself. . . . But in reality no story tells itself. Art is at work. A book of critical essays edited by
appeared in Paris in 1979.
's recent study in English calls her an extraordinarily coherent, sophisticated poet . . . as serious, authentic, and as subjectively agonized and unified as any writer in the so-called age of authorship.
, who notes how Lewis's criticism picked up the terms from earlier, dismissive critics and reversed them, calls MF one of the few medieval writers to write self-consciously from a woman's viewpoint.
Christine de Pisan
Critic
calls this a ghostly reminder that
was the inventor of courtly polite literature.
Margery Kempe
The early date and extraordinary character of
's work have made its reputation known to many who have not read it. This work has polarised critics. Some see
herself as self-publicising, exhibitionist, and hysterical, others as candid and intense. Some see her text as garrulous, scrappy, and overwritten, others as colloquial, spontaneous, and idiosyncratic. Her discoverer,
, saw her as part of a remarkable contemporary feminist movement.
is the subject of a video by
.
Margaret Roper
's intellectual achievements, together with her father's charisma and the touching story of her heroism and family devotion, made her for centuries a benchmark for commentators on the status of women.
set out in his Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, 1752, to commend her father for understanding that Woman was not given to Man, as his Slave or Servant; but as a Companion, an Helpmeet. Before the work was printed, however, he toned down this passage, removing the reference to slavery.
Mary Basset
The editorial paragraph in the original publication said that
wrote so much like her grandfather that their styles could hardly be told apart (a great compliment), and expressed the hope of having her work published alone later. Her contemporary
picked up the point about likeness to
and added further praise of her style as plain, yet exquisite, elegant, and eloquent. Her translation was reprinted in modern English, with appreciative comment by editor
, as St. Thomas More's History of the Passion, 1941.
Anne Bacon
notes that
's editor for Fouretene Sermons, while praising her as an exceptional woman, apparently felt no sense of incongruity in contrasting her with the generality of learned women, who bable, or talk like parrots without understanding.
Margaret Tyler
This book appeared at the beginning of an upsurge in English interest in the Spanish romances, and in anxiety on the part of moralists as to their effect on young, impressionable readers. Twenty years after its publication it was condemned by
as unsuitable for young readers. Recent critical discussion includes two works by
: an essay in English Literary Renaissance, 1988, and her monograph Oppositional Voices: women as writers and translators of literature in the English Renaissance, 1992. Tyler has even been called the first English feminist, on the strength of being the first woman to defend in print the literary activity of women.
Anne Locke
in Houres of Recreation praised present-day noble Gentlewomen famous for their learning (including three of
and
) as equalling famous Greek and Roman women.
Queen Elizabeth I
The immense and long-lasting interest aroused by Elizabeth is not, of course, primarily due to her writings, any more than were the adulation paid her during her lifetime, the cult of Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, or the many dedications from male authors. But some of the flattery addressed to her was couched in literary terms. This went so far, even, as equating her with
. An epistle prefacing a translation from
of 1569 called her the second sappho, and
, celebrating her in his Partheniades, said she wrote with Ladye Sapphoes pen. After her death, women writers became increasingly conscious of
as an author. Elizabeth's work gave courage to
and
. Her role as queen was an inspiration to
and was praised by
and
. Her wielding of power in general and her treatment of
, in particular made her almost a touchstone on issues of sentiment versus reason, and of the question whether women can exercise power without being judged unfeminine. To
, for instance, Elizabeth was a heroine. Montagu thought that her writings were excellent, that she and they had been bespatter'd because she was a woman, and that women ought to defend her as the Glory of their Sex. To
, on the other hand (one of innumerable fictionalizers of her whose tradition runs from the seventeenth century until today),
was a heartless female villain.
's Lady Delacour in Belinda thinks her a pedantic coquet. Lives were written of her by
(who admired her reign but not her writing),
, and
.
Lady Jane Lumley
Scholar
has pointed out that what have been called errors in translation (omissions, transpositions) are deliberate changes made for literary or intellectual effect. Editor
provides a detailed analysis in her introduction.
Isabella Whitney
In the past
has sometimes had her work reprinted for its curiosity value. Current critical opinion of her is represented by
in ODNB, who calls her both a unique female voice and a trend-setter in the jocose tone with she approaches her breezily expressed secular concerns.
Grace, Lady Mildmay
, called these medical papers the treasure of this my worthy mother's mind. Though they did not connect systematically with any wider public,
's knowledge and skills became widely known.
, in a published attack on women's participation in healing, made an exception for her, noting that she was right religious and virtuous, and practised with care and charity and good judgement,
Anne Dowriche
wrote in 1999 that he hoped to provoke a critical re-evaluation of
's history. He noted her scholarly ambitions and argued that she influenced
's handling of similar material, though compared with Marlowe her gendering of female subjects is more complex.
Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
The fact that Mary Sidney did not print the psalms, as she did her brother's poems, says something about her attitudes both to print and to her own ranked and gendered identity as an author. Such attitudes seem to have been complicated at the time, and are hard now for moderns to unravel. Yet she must have regarded the psalms as her own most important work, since she chose to be painted with them in her hand in 1618.
,
, and
all learned from this work, in imagistic inventiveness and metrical versatility. While her contemporary fellow-poets apparently read her without special regard to her gender, Mary Sidney contributed in the long run to the enduring popularity of metrical psalms as a female genre.
thought that the accuracy of these poems as translation showed more then [sic] a woman's skill and believed that the Countess of Pembroke had help from
, chaplain to her husband.
admired them enough to make a beautiful transcription and suggest presenting them to the queen.
wrote a poem in their praise, perhaps shortly after the countess's death: Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney, and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister, which sees the biblical
's inspiration divided between the two sibling translators.
Aemilia Lanyer
in the ODNB entry on
notes that the lines to the
, Lanyer's pre-eminent patron, are remarkable in declining to equate female excellence with chastity, but celebrating instead a feminine mastery of . . . the humanist ideal of masculine virtue.
Dorothy Leigh
's book probably influenced the compilation and publication of those by
and
. Editor
sees her as in some sense a foremother of the women preachers who were to arise during the Interregnum, a generation after her death. Since her rediscovery in the 1970s or 80s, a number of articles on her have been logged by the
bibliography.
Elizabeth Melvill
Comments on Ane Godlie Dreame, though sparse, have been persistent.
recorded that she was famous for her dream anent her spirituall condition.
in 1770 thought it almost too terrible for the ear, with dreadful wild expressions of distraction and melancholy. This assessment was contradicted by
in 1781 and by
writing to Notes and Queries in 1859.
credited it in 1826 with considerable beauty and imagination, and Alexander Hume's editor
in 1902 with much art and vividness, keen religious insight, deep spiritual conviction, and a feeling of the terrible which is never monotonous.
has welcomed
's poetic confidence and her clear adoption of a female persona as poet, pilgrim, model, and teacher, as well as redeemed sinner, and
places
with
and
as religious writers delivering an important political message to their contemporaries. Laing thinks that this poem may have influenced
, and
in the Dictionary of Literary Biography speculates that it may have influenced
, since he owned a copy of Laing's Metrical Tales.
Lady Arbella Stuart
has been much written about, though more for her life than her authorship. In 1611 The Second Maiden's Tragedy, probably by
, made her into the Lady, James I into the Tyrant, and her husband into the rightful king. In 1828
in Records of Woman saw her as victimized yet strong, though denied the domestic happiness her heart yearned for. Victorian historians, especially women, found her valuable as a peg on which to hang explorations of the nature and role of woman. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski sees her writings as a mask and escape valve for a highly intelligent woman who sees the absurdities around her with penetrating clarity but cannot alter or escape from them.
Author event in Anne Locke
Elizabeth Richardson
and
have discussed this text in detail (see below).
Martha Moulsworth
The re-discovery of the poem and its publication in 1993 was welcomed with an extraordinary outburst of critical attention: two volumes of essays as well as those contained in the original edition.
Cicely Bulstrode
During
's lifetime
attacked her by calling her both a fool and a whore. After her death, both he and
eulogized her morals and also her wit.
Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland
The work is preceded by tributes from readers, including one from a woman who says that women feel envy and amazement at this work of a woman's hand. The translation incorporates proto-feminist passages, which are those most often extracted for reprinting today. It concludes on the hope that the English monarchy would return to the Catholic faith.