How Women Became Poets

How Women Became Poets PDF Author: Emily Hauser
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691239282
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Book Description
How the idea of the author was born in the battleground of gender When Sappho sang her songs, the only word that existed to describe a poet was a male one—aoidos, or “singer-man.” The most famous woman poet of ancient Greece, whose craft was one of words, had no words with which to talk about who she was and what she did. In How Women Became Poets, Emily Hauser rewrites the story of Greek literature as one of gender, arguing that the ways the Greeks talked about their identity as poets constructed, played with, and broke down gender expectations that literature was for men alone. Bringing together recent studies in ancient authorship, gender, and performativity, Hauser offers a new history of classical literature that redefines the canon as a constant struggle to be heard through, and sometimes despite, gender. Women, as Virginia Woolf recognized, need rooms of their own in order to write. So, too, have women writers through history needed a name to describe what it is they do. Hauser traces the invention of that name in ancient Greece, exploring the archaeology of the gendering of the poet. She follows ancient Greek poets, philosophers, and historians as they developed and debated the vocabulary for authorship on the battleground of gender—building up and reinforcing the word for male poet, then in response creating a language with which to describe women who write. Crucially, Hauser reinserts women into the traditionally all-male canon of Greek literature, arguing for the centrality of their role in shaping ideas around authorship and literary production.

Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome

Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome PDF Author: Ellen Greene
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806136646
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
Although Greek society was largely male-dominated, it gave rise to a strong tradition of female authorship. Women poets of ancient Greece and Rome have long fascinated readers, even though much of their poetry survives only in fragmentary form. This pathbreaking volume is the first collection of essays to examine virtually all surviving poetry by Greek and Roman women. It elevates the status of the poems by demonstrating their depth and artistry. Edited and with an introduction by Ellen Greene, the volume covers a broad time span, beginning with Sappho (ca. 630 b.c.e.) in archaic Greece and extending to Sulpicia (first century B.C.E.) in Augustan Rome. In their analyses, the contributors situate the female poets in an established male tradition, but they also reveal their distinctly “feminine” perspectives. Despite relying on literary convention, the female poets often defy cultural norms, speaking in their own voices and transcending their positions as objects of derision in male-authored texts. In their innovative reworkings of established forms, women poets of ancient Greece and Rome are not mere imitators but creators of a distinct and original body of work.

How Women Became Poets

How Women Became Poets PDF Author: Emily Hauser
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691201072
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Book Description
"This book that shows how ancient poets broke the silence of literary gender norms to express their own voices, and thus illuminating long neglected discussions of gender in the ancient world. In How Women Became Poets, Emily Hauser provides a startling new history of classical literature that redefines the canon as a constant struggle to be heard through, and sometimes despite, gender. By bringing together recent studies in ancient authorship, gender, and performativity, Hauser offers gendered lens to issues of voice and identity in classical literature and poetry. What emerges from this is a new literary history that reframes the authors of classical literature as both enforcing and exploring gender, and shows for the first time how women broke the silence of gender norms around literary production to express their own voices. By revisiting traditional assumptions about the canon of Greek literature, and highlighting the articulated construction of masculinity in Greek poetic texts, the book places ancient women poets back onto center stage as principal actors in the drama of the debate around what it means to create poetry. Much of the importance of this work is adding in female authors to the history of Greek literature, both well-known and marginal, while demonstrating how the idea of the author was born in the battleground of gender"--

She is Fierce: Brave, Bold and Beautiful Poems by Women

She is Fierce: Brave, Bold and Beautiful Poems by Women PDF Author: Ana Sampson
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books
ISBN: 1760782823
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
She is Fierce: Brave, Bold and Beautiful Poems by Women is a powerful collection of 150 poems written by women – from classic, much loved poets to bold modern voices. Collected by poet Ana Sampson, this collection celebrates the centenary of women's suffrage at a time when we are still having important conversations about women's right to be treated as equals. It speaks of universal experiences and emotions. The anthology is divided into the following sections: Roots and Growing Up Friendship Love Nature Freedom, Mindfulness and Joy Fashion, society and body image Protest, courage and resistance Endings She is Fierce contains an inclusive array of voices, from modern and contemporary poets such as Maya Angelou and Grace Nichols to poets from previous centuries including Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Charlotte Bronte. Immerse yourself in poems from Wendy Cope, Carol Ann Duffy, Fleur Adcock, Liz Berry, Jackie Kay, Hollie McNish, Imtiaz Dharker, Helen Dunmore, Mary Oliver and Dorothy Parker, to name but a few! Featuring short biographies of each poet, She is Fierce is a stunning collection and an essential addition to any bookshelf.

I Became Alone

I Became Alone PDF Author: Judith Thurman
Publisher: Atheneum Books
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Book Description
Explores five women poets, ranging from Sappho to Emily Dickinson, through brief biographies and selections of their poetry.

The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women

The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women PDF Author: Rabe`eh Balkhi
Publisher: Mage Publishers
ISBN: 1949445607
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 600

Book Description
One of the very first Persian poets was a woman (Rabe’eh, who lived over a thousand years ago) and there have been women poets writing in Persian in virtually every generation since that time until the present. Before the twentieth century they tended to come from society’s social extremes. Many were princesses, a good number were hired entertainers of one kind or another, and they were active in many different countries – Iran of course, but also India, Afghanistan, and areas of central Asia that are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Not surprisingly, a lot of their poetry sounds like that of their male counterparts, but a lot doesn’t; there are distinctively bawdy and flirtatious poems by medieval women poets, poems from virtually every era in which the poet complains about her husband (sometimes light-heartedly, sometimes with poignant seriousness), touching poems on the death of a child, and many epigrams centered on little details that bring a life from hundreds of years ago vividly before our eyes. This new bilingual edition of The Mirror of My Heart – the poems in Persian and English on facing pages – is a unique and captivating collection introduced and translated by Dick Davis, an acclaimed scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right. In his introduction he provides fascinating background detail on Persian poetry written by women through the ages, including common themes and motifs and a brief overview of Iranian history showing how women poets have been affected by the changing dynasties. From Rabe’eh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first, each of the eighty-four poets in this volume is introduced in a short biographical note, while explanatory notes give further insight into the poems themselves.

Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture

Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture PDF Author: Marilyn B. Skinner
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111861108X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Book Description
This agenda-setting text has been fully revised in its second edition, with coverage extended into the Christian era. It remains the most comprehensive and engaging introduction to the sexual cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. Covers a wide range of subjects, including Greek pederasty and the symposium, ancient prostitution, representations of women in Greece and Rome, and the public regulation of sexual behavior Expanded coverage extends to the advent of Christianity, includes added illustrations, and offers student-friendly pedagogical features Text boxes supply intriguing information about tangential topics Gives a thorough overview of current literature while encouraging further reading and discussion Conveys the complexity of ancient attitudes towards sexuality and gender and the modern debates they have engendered

Collecting Women

Collecting Women PDF Author: Chantel M. Lavoie
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 0838757499
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
This book addresses the place of women writers in anthologies and other literary collections in eighteenth-century England. It explores and contextualizes the ways in which two different kinds of printed material--poetic miscellanies and biographical collections--complemented one another in defining expectations about the woman writer. Far more than the single-authored text, it was the collection in one form or another that invested poems and their authors with authority. By attending to this fascinating cultural context, Chantel Lavoie explores how women poets were placed posthumously in the world of eighteenth-century English letters. Investigating the lives and works of four well known poets--Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch, and Elizabeth Rowe--Lavoie illuminates the way in which celebrated women were collected alongside their poetry, the effect of collocation on individual reputations, and the intersection between bibliography and biography as female poets themselves became curiosities. In so doing, Collecting Women contributes to the understanding of the intersection of cultural history, canon formation, and literary collecting in eighteenth-century England.

Poets in the Public Sphere

Poets in the Public Sphere PDF Author: Paula Bernat Bennett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691227705
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description
Based entirely on archival research, Poets in the Public Sphere traces the emergence of the "New Woman" by examining poetry published by American women in newspapers and magazines between 1800 and 1900. Using sources like the Kentucky Reporter, the Cherokee Phoenix, the Cincinnati Israelite, and the Atlantic Monthly, Bennett is able to track how U.S. women from every race, class, caste, region, and religion exploited the freedom offered by the nation's periodical press, especially the poetry columns, to engage in heated debate with each other and with men over matters of mutual concern. Far from restricting their poems to the domestic and personal, these women addressed a significant array of political issues--abolition, Indian removals, economic and racial injustice, the Civil War, and, not least, their own changing status as civil subjects. Overflowing with a wealth of heretofore untapped information, their poems demonstrate conclusively that "ordinary" nineteenth-century women were far more influenced by the women's rights movement than historians have allowed. In showing how these women turned the sentimental and ideologically saturated conventions of the period's verse to their own ends, Bennett argues passionately and persuasively for poetry's power as cultural and political discourse. As much women's history as literary history, this book invites readers to rethink not only the role that nineteenth-century women played in their own emancipation but the role that poetry plays in cultural life.

What Kind of Woman

What Kind of Woman PDF Author: Kate Baer
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063008432
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 117

Book Description
An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller A Goop Book Club Pick "If you want your breath to catch and your heart to stop, turn to Kate Baer."--Joanna Goddard, Cup of Jo A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being a woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend. “When life throws you a bag of sorrow, hold out your hands/Little by little, mountains are climbed.” So ends Kate Baer’s remarkable poem “Things My Girlfriends Teach Me.” In “Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels” she challenges her reader to consider their grandmother’s cake, the taste of the sea, the cool swill of freedom. In her poem “Deliverance” about her son’s birth she writes “What is the word for when the light leaves the body?/What is the word for when it/at last, returns?” Through poems that are as unforgettably beautiful as they are accessible, Kate Bear proves herself to truly be an exemplary voice in modern poetry. Her words make women feel seen in their own bodies, in their own marriages, and in their own lives. Her poems are those you share with your mother, your daughter, your sister, and your friends.