Author: Ruth StonePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 84
Book Description
52-poem cycle explores the grief and loneliness epitomized by the widow, but shared by all.
Who is the Widow's Muse?
Author: Ruth StonePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 84
Book Description
52-poem cycle explores the grief and loneliness epitomized by the widow, but shared by all.
The Widows' Might
Author: Vivian Bruce CongerPublisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814716741
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
Explores how widows were portrayed in early American culture, and how widows themselves created identities in response to their unique roles. Utilizing widows' wills, prescriptive literature, court appearances, newspaper advertisements and letters, the author analyzes how widows in colonial Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Maryland navigated their domestic, legal, economic, and community roles in early American society.
The House is Made of Poetry
Author: Wendy BarkerPublisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809320127
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Ruth Stone has always eschewed self-promotion and, in the words of Leslie Fiedler, "has never been a member of any school or clique or gaggle of mutual admirers." But her poems speak so vibrantly for her that she cannot be ignored. In her preface to this volume, Sandra M. Gilbert declares that Stone's "intense attention to the ordinary transforms it into (or reveals it as) the extraordinary. Her passionate verses evoke impassioned responses." At the same time, Gilbert continues, the essays collected here "consistently testify to Stone's radical unworldliness, in particular her insouciant contempt for the ' floor walkers and straw bosses' who sometimes seem to control the poetry ' factory' both inside and outside the university." Wendy Barker and Sandra Gilbert have organized the book into three sections: "Knowing Ruth Stone," "A Life of Art," and "Reading Ruth Stone." In "Knowing Ruth Stone," writers of different generations who have known the poet over the years provide memoirs. Noting Stone's singularity, Fiedler points out that "she resists all labels" and is "one of the few contemporaries whom it is possible to think of simply as a ' poet.' " Sharon Olds defines her vitality ("A Ruth Stone poem feels alive in the hands"), and Jan Freeman praises her aesthetic intensity ("Everything in the life of Ruth Stone is integrated with poetry"). "A Life of Art" sketches the outlines of Stone's career and traces her evolution as a poet. Barker and Norman Friedman, for example, trace her development from the "high spirits and elegant craft" of her first volume-- In an Iridescent Time-- through the "deepening shadows," "poignant wit," and "bittersweet meditations" of her later work. In interviews separated by decades (one in the 1970s and one in the 1990s), Sandra Gilbert and Robert Bradley discuss with Stone her own sense of her aesthetic origins and literary growth. "Reading Ruth Stone" is an examination of Stone's key themes and modes. Diane Wakoski and Diana O' Hehir focus on the tragicomic vision that colors much of her work; Kevin Clark and Elyse Blankley explore the political aspects of her poetry; Roger Gilbert analyzes her "often uncannily astute insights into the ' otherness' of other lives"; Janet Lowery and Kandace Brill Lombart draw on the biographical background of Stone's "grief work"; and Sandra Gilbert studies her caritas, her empathic love that redeems pain.
The Profession of Widowhood
Author: Katherine Clark WalterPublisher: Catholic University of America Press
ISBN: 0813230195
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447
Book Description
The Profession of Widowhood explores how the idea of ‘true’ widowhood was central to pre-modern ideas concerning marriage and of female identity more generally. The medieval figure of the Christian vere vidua or “good” widow evolved from and reinforced ancient social and religious sensibilities of chastity, loyalty and grief as gendered ‘work.’ The ideal widow was a virtuous woman who mourned her dead husband in chastity, solitude, and most importantly, in perpetuity, marking her as “a widow indeed” (1 Tim 5:5). The widow who failed to display adequate grief fulfilled the stereotype of the ‘merry widow’ who forgot her departed spouse and abused her sexual and social freedom. Stereotypes of widows ‘good’ and ‘bad’ served highly-charged ideological functions in pre-modern culture, and have remained durable even in modern times, even as Western secular society now focuses more on a woman’s recovery from grief and possible re-coupling than the expectation that she remain forever widowed. The widow represented not only the powerful bond created by love and marriage, but also embodied the conventions of grief that ordered the response when those bonds were broken by premature death. This notion of the widow as both a passive memorial to her husband and as an active ‘rememberer’ was rooted in ancient traditions, and appropriated by early Christian and medieval authors who used “good” widowhood to describe the varieties of female celibacy and to define the social and gender order. A tradition of widowhood characterized by chastity, solitude, and permanent bereavement affirmed both the sexual mores and political agenda of the medieval Church. Medieval widows—both holy women recognized as saints and ‘ordinary women’ in medieval daily life—recognized this tradition of professed chastity in widowhood not only as a valuable strategy for avoiding remarriage and protecting their independence, but as a state with inherent dignity that afforded opportunities for spiritual development in this world and eternal merit in the next.
The Widows
Author: Jess MontgomeryPublisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1250184533
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
“The Widows kept me on the edge of my seat. Montgomery is a masterful storyteller.” —Lee Martin, author of Pulitzer Prize-Finalist The Bright Forever Inspired by the true story of Ohio’s first female sheriff, Jess Montgomery’s powerful, lyrical debut is the story of two women who take on murder and corruption at the heart of their community. Kinship, Ohio, 1924: When Lily Ross learns that her husband, Daniel, the town’s widely respected sheriff, has been killed while transporting a prisoner in an apparent accident, she vows to seek the truth about his death. Hours after his funeral, a stranger appears at her door. Marvena Whitcomb, a coal miner’s widow, is unaware that Daniel has died and begs to speak with him about her missing daughter. From miles away but worlds apart, Lily’s and Marvena’s lives collide as they realize that Daniel was perhaps not the man that either of them believed him to be. *BONUS CONTENT: This edition of The Widows includes a new introduction from the author and a discussion guide "The Widows is a gripping, beautifully written novel about two women avenging the murder of the man they both loved."—Hallie Ephron, New York Times bestselling author of You'll Never Know, Dear "Jess Montgomery's gorgeous writing can be just as dark and terrifying as a subterranean cave when the candle is snuffed out, but her prose can just as easily lead you to the surface for a gasp of air and a glimpse of blinding, beautiful sunlight. This is a powerful novel: a tale of loss, greed, and violence, and the story of two powerful women who refuse to stand down."—Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Ballad, A Land More Kind than Home, and This Dark Road to Mercy "[A] flinty, heartfelt mystery that sings of hawks and history, of coal mines and the urgent fight for social justice."—Julia Keller, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bone on Bone
The Muse's Mirrour
Author: The Tenth Muse
Author: Judith JonesPublisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307498255
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
A memoir by the legendary cookbook editor who was present at the creation of the American food revolution and played a pivotal role in shaping it • “Engrossing. . . . The Tenth Muse lets you pull up a chair at the table where American gastronomic history took place.”—O, The Oprah Magazine Living in Paris after World War II, Jones broke free of bland American food and reveled in everyday French culinary delights. On returning to the States she published Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The rest is publishing and gastronomic history. A new world now opened up to Jones as she discovered, with her husband Evan, the delights of American food, publishing some of the premier culinary luminaries of the twentieth century: from Julia Child, James Beard, and M.F.K. Fisher to Claudia Roden, Edna Lewis, and Lidia Bastianich. Also included are fifty of Jones's favorite recipes collected over a lifetime of cooking-each with its own story and special tips. “Lovely. . . . A rare glimpse into the roots of the modern culinary world.”—Chicago Tribune
The Muses Females are
Author: Robert C. EvansPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
This volume offers diverse perspectives on the recently published "Memorandum" of Martha Moulsworth, a fascinating woman who in 1632 wrote one of the first autobiographical poems in the English language. Moulsworth's poem, which issues a startlingly early and radical call for educational equality, provides one of our best "inside views" of the life of a Renaissance woman, and the poem is also one of the few writings about widowhood written by an early modern widow. Yet the poem is also highly sophisticated as a work of art, and it has already proven its appeal to a wide variety of readers, including both beginning students and noted scholars and critics. The present book builds on the first edition of Moulsworth's poem - "My Name Was Martha": A Renaissance Woman's Autobiographical Poem (Locust Hill, 1993). The new volume offers extensive additional biographical information about Moulsworth herself, and it also presents readings of the poem as a poem and as a piece of autobiography. The book also considers such broader issues as the myth of the muses, the role of education in the Renaissance, the status of wives and widows, and the ideals and realities of early modern marriage. Moulsworth's poem emerges as an even richer work when viewed from so many different perspectives. Moulsworth, however, is hardly the only Renaissance woman writer examined in this volume. Many essayists use Moulsworth as a touchstone for discussing numerous other authors, including such figures as Roger Ascham, Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish (the Duchess of Newcastle), Lady Anne Clifford, An Collins, Queen Elizabeth I, Elizabeth Grymston, Lady Elizabeth Langham, Aemilia Lanyer, Bathsua Makin, ElizabethMelville, Richard Mulcaster, Katherine Philips, Mary Sidney (the Countess of Pembroke), Rachel Speght, Hester Wiat, and Lady Mary Wroth (to name a few).
The Wife of Bath in Afterlife
Author: Betsy BowdenPublisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611462444
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
By focusing on one literary character, as interpreted in both verbal art and visual art at a point midway in time between the author’s era and our own, this study applies methodology appropriate for overcoming limitations posed by historical periodization and by isolation among academic specialities. Current trends in Chaucer scholarship call for diachronic afterlife studies like this one, sometimes termed “medievalism.” So far, however, nearly all such work by-passes the eighteenth century (here designated 1660-1810). Furthermore, medieval authors’ afterlives during any time period have not been analyzed by way of the multiple fields of specialization integrated into this study. The Wife of Bath is regarded through the disciplinary lenses of eighteenth-century literature, visual art, print marketing, education, folklore, music, equitation, and especially theater both in London and on the Continent.
The Restoration Mind
Author: W. Gerald MarshallPublisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874135718
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
Through the inclusion of essays by leading Restoration scholars from around the world, this book attempts to fulfill a much-needed function for serious students of the period and uses a culture-based approach to offer a general theory regarding the Restoration mentality. The editor, W. Gerald Marshall, addresses the serious lack of an interdisciplinary, culture-based study of this important era.