Zsuzsa Fulop and Manju Jaidka
This survey of women's poetry seeks to distinguish
between women's discourse and that of men, focusing on the feminine
consciousness in poetry, and feminine attitudes in general, as
contrasted to men's poetry. It is based on the premise that women's
poetry speaks a language different from that written by male poets.
It begins with the legacy of the nineteenth century handed down
by poets like Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning to their twentieth-century counterparts. It involves
a detailed study of poets like Marianne Moore, Hilda Doolittle,
Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Gwendolyn Brooks and
Audre Lorde, establishing links between their works and attitudes.
A cross-cultural perspective is given through a comparative analysis
of Stevie Smith, Kamla Das, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Cvetayeva,
Gabriella Mistral, and Margaret Atwood.
Women's poetry, when treated as a gender-specific
cultural artifact, involves a scrutiny of the power-relations
at work in a given culture, the way they operate and the way women
-- women poets, in particular -- react to them. The proposed course
of study seeks to establish the necessity and inevitability of
breaking the hegemony of male dominance and the emergence of a
new lexicon of love and sexuality among women poets of the twentieth
century. There is a palpable attempt to reject the inscription
of feminine identity in terms of discourse that treats woman as
a mere appendage to the male definition of the self.
The approach is interdisciplinary, deriving
its theoretical anchor from Michel Foucault, Helene Cixous, Luce
Irigary, Adrienne Rich, and other leading contemporary theoreticians.
Their insights are applied to poets whose works will be studied
in terms of power-relationships and attitudes of dominance in
social and discursive terms.
1. The Onset of Feminism.
Feminist Criticism. Feminism in literature.
Selected essays on Feminist theory: Anglo-American Feminism. French
Feminism. Feminism and the racial question: Black women's poetry.
Special emphasis on the theories of Helene Cixous, Luce Irigary,
Adrienne Rich.
2. Legacy of the Nineteenth Century: The
roots of twentieth-century feminism may be traced back to the
nineteenth century where implicit in the woman poet's voice one
may detect the early signs of a dissatisfaction with the socio/cultural
position of women and a questioning of the patriarchal tradition.
Texts for study:
Emily Dickinson:
Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Christina Rossetti:
3. Marianne Moore:
Better known for its conventional themes and animal images, Moore's
poetry contains hidden undercurrents of the feminist ideology.
Working within the male-dominated tradition, she undertakes a
revision of the subservient role that women are supposed to play
in society and presents a view of marriage that is far from conventional.
Texts for study:
4. Hilda Doolittle: H.D. became famous as an Imagist poet in the shadow of the literary giant, Ezra Pound. Her poetry evolved over the years as she absorbed the changes that took place around her. Towards the last part of her career, her poems were no longer written in the conventional manner. Instead, they focus on man-made myths that have been perpetuated over the centuries. One such myth that H.D. retells is that of Helen of Troy who has been treated unfairly by storytellers like Euripides.
Text for study:
5. Sylvia Plath:
Plath's poems begin with a fairly conventional woman protagonist
living in the shadow of a male figure, but gradually there is
a change of persona. In the last few months of her life she presented
a totally different woman who is no longer docile but violent:
a Fury raging for revenge. The metaphor of flying (as a bee, for
instance) is significant in Plath's poetry. Texts for study:
6. Anne Sexton:
In Sexton's poems there is a strong focus on the female body.
It is possible to study her work in the light of French Feminist
writers who feel that a woman writes with her body. Texts for
study:
7. Adrienne Rich:
A poet whose ideas kept evolving continuously, Rich is also a
leading theoretician whose terminology differs from that of most
Anglo-American feminists. Her ideas on writing as revision, for
instance, are highly relevant in the twentieth century when old
concepts are being re-opened for fresh scrutiny. Texts for study
include:
8. Gwendolyn Brooks: A
black woman poet is doubly disadvantaged, first because of her
gender and second because of her race. In the work of Gwendolyn
Brooks this double bind is apparent. Brooks takes pride in her
race and community, and celebrates womanhood. Texts for study:
9. Audre Lorde:
Often described as a "warrior poet," Audre Lorde is
black , feminist, and lesbian. She combines autobiography with
history and myth to form "biomythography" and celebrates
strong black women in her poetry. Texts for study:
10. Cross-cultural connections:
No matter how far apart women poets may be in the chronotopic
sense, certain characteristics in their works remain the same.
These include a resentment of socio-cultural norms that bind and
shackle. There is also a desire to pursue creativity in an individual
manner, independent of male-dominated literary tradition. The
poets for comparative study from other geographical locations
include:
Bennett, Paula. My Life, A Loaded Gun: Female
Creativity and Feminist Poetics. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.
Brooks, Jerome. "In the Name of the Father:
The Poetry of Audre Lorde," Black Women Writers (1950-1980):
A Critical Evaluation, ed. Mari Evans. 1984.
Brown, Cheryl L. and Karen Olson, eds. Feminist
Criticism: Essays on Theory, Poetry and Prose. Metuchen, N.J.:
Scarecrow Press, 1978.
Butscher, Edward. Sylvia Plath: The Woman
and the Work. New York: Dodd, 1977.
Cixous, Helene. "The Laugh of the Medusa."
Tr. Signs !(Summer 1976): 875-93.
---------. "Castration or Decapitation."
Tr. Signs 7 (Fall 1981): 41-55. See also pp. 36-40, Intro.
by Annette Kuhn.
Cornillon, Susan Koppelman, ed. Images of
Women in Fiction, Feminist Perspectives. Bowling Green, OH:
BGSU Press, 1972.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex.
(1953)
Diamond, Arlyn, and Lee Edwards, ed. The
Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism.
Amherst, Mass.: U. of Mass. Press, 1977.
DiBernard, Barbara. "Zami: A Portrait
of an Artist as a Black Lesbian," The Kenyon Review
13:4 (Fall 1991): 195-213.
Donovan, Josephine. 1985. Feminist Theory:
The Intellectual Traditiuons of American Feminism. New York:
Ungar,
Doolittle, Hilda [H.D.] Helen in Egypt
, with an introduction by Horace Gregory. New York: Grove Press
Inc., 1961.
Duplessis, Rachel, and Susan Stanford Friedman,
eds. Signets: Reading H.D. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1990.
Engel, Bernard F. Marianne Moore. 1963.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique.
Friedman, Susan Stanford. 1975 "Who Buried
H.D.? A Poet, Her Critics, and her Place in Literary Tradition,"
College English 37 (March): 807.
----. 1981. Psyche Reborn: The Emergence
of H.D. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gallop, Jane. Around 1981: Academic Feminist
Literary Theory. (1991)
Garrigue, Jean. Marianne Moore. 1965.
Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Mad
Woman in the Attic. (1979)
---. eds. Shakespeare's Sisters: Feminist
Essays on Women Poets. (Bloomington: Indiana, 1979).
Greene, Gayle, and Coppelia Kahn. Making
a Difference. (1985)
Hadas. Pamela. Marianne Moore: Poet of Affection.
1977.
Hall, Donald. Marianne Moore: The Cage and
the Animal. 1970.
Holland, Sharon Patricia. "Which Me Will
Survive: Audre Lorde and the Development of a Black Feminist Ideology,"
Critical Matrix: Princeton Working Papers in Women's Studies.
Spring 1988: 1-30.
Holley, Margaret. The Poetry of Marianne
Moore: A Study in Voice and Value. 1987.
Irigary, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman.
(tr. 1985)
---------. This Sex which is not One.
(tr. 1985)
Jacobus, Mary. Reading Woman: Essays in
Feminist Criticism. (1986)
---------. Women Writing and Writing about
Women. (1979)
Johnson, Barbara. A World of Difference.
(1987)
Juhasz, Suzanne. Naked and Fiery Forms:
Modern American Poetry by Women. New York: Octagon, 1978.
Kauffman, Linda. Feminism and Institutions:
Dialogues on Feminist Theory. (1989)
---------. Gender and Theory: Dialogues
on Feminist Criticism.
Keyes, Claire. The Aesthetics of Power:
The Poetry of Adrienne Rich. Athens: U. of Georgia Press,
1986.
Lacey, Paul A. The Inner War: Forms and
Themes in Recent American Poetry. Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1972.
Lane, Gary, ed. Sylvia Plath: New Views
on the Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1979.
Marks, Elaine, and Courtivron. New French
Feminisms.
Martin, Wendy. An American Triptych: Anne
Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich. Chapel Hill: U.
of North Carolina Press, 1984.
McClatchy, J. D. Anne Sexton: The Artist
and Her Critics. Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, 1978.
Melhem, D. H. Gwendolyn Brooks: Poetry and
the Heroic
Voice. 1987.
---. Heroism in in the New Black Poetry:
Introductions and Interviews. 1990.
Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics. (1969)
Moers, Ellen. Literary Women. (1976)
Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics.
Moore, Marianne. Collected Poems. 1951.
Newman, Charles. The Art of Sylvia Plath:
A Symposium. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press,
1973.
Ostriker, Alicia Susan. Stealing the Language:
The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1986.
Pateman, Carole, and Elizabeth Gross. Feminist
Challenges: Social and Political Theory. Boston: Northeastern
U. Press, 1986.
Phillips, Robert. The Confessional Poets.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois U. Press, 1973.
Plath, Sylvia. Collected Poems, ed.
Ted Hughes. London: Faber, 1981.
---. Letters Home, ed. Aurelia Plath.
London: Faber, 1977.
Quinn, Vincent. 1967. Hilda Doolittle (H.D.).
New York: Twayne Publishers.
Rich, Adrienne. "When We Dead Awaken:
Writing As Re-vision." College English 34.
---. Adrienne Rich's Poetry, ed. Barbara
and Albert Gelpi. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1976.
---. Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience
and Institution. New York: Norton, 1976.
Schulman, Grace. Marianne Moore: The Poetry
of Engagement. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1986.
Sexton, Anne. The Complete Poems. Boston:
Houghton, 1981.
---. No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews,
and Prose, ed. Steven E. Colburn. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan
Press, 1985.
---. Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters,
ed. Linda Grey Sexton. Boston: Houghton, 1977.
Shaw, Harry. Gwendolyn Brooks. 1980.
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their
Own. (1977))
---. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays
on Women, Literature, and Theory. NY: Pantheon, 1985.
---------. Sister's Choice: Tradition and
Change in American Women's Writing. (1991)
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. The Female Imagination.
N. Y.: Knopf, 1972.
Swann, Thomas Burnett. 1962. The Classical
World of H.D. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Tate, Claudia. "Audre Lorde," Black
Women Writers at Work. 1983.
Walker, Chery. 1991. Masks Outrageous and
Austere: Culture, Psyche and Persona in Modern Women Poets.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indian University Press.
Warhol, Robin, and Diane Herndl, eds. Feminisms.
(1992)
Watkins, Gloria. Feminist Theory from Margin
to Center. (1984)
Werner, Craig. Adrienne Rich: The Poet and
Her Critics. Chicago and London: American Library Association,
1988.