The Muse Strikes Back
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In Classical mythology, the "Muse" is one of the nine (originally three) Greek goddesses who preside over literature and the arts. Through time, male writers have invoked the Muse as an inspirational force...
In this book, Katherine McAlpine and Gail White bring together works that respond to the Muse archetype. As the editors explain: "In studying the male poetic canon ... we find few women with identities, minds and agendas of their own, few flesh-and-blood heroines like Chaucer's Wife of Bath."
As the editors say, though, "Old archetypes die hard." But, the works in this volume strike back at the stereotypical view the canon has created. These works rewrite literary history by creating different voices to put with all of the faces and names that have become so familiar: the Biblical Eve, Lot's wife, Dante's Beatrice, Wordsworth's Lucy, Poe's Annabel Lee, and so many others. These works, and many others, are reevaluated, with the view of rethinking the works from a different point of view.
Starting with Biblical sources and moving through the Greek writers, Medieval and Renaissance times, the 17th century, 18th century, and beyond, the works also range in tone and approach. Some are angry ... Some are humorous. But all provide another view into the character of the Muse, the focal point of the poem. Some even provide an interesting view into the writer himself ...
The writers to whom these responses are directed range from Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid to Dante, Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Thomas Wyatt, William Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, John Milton, Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, William Butler Yeats, and many more.
All the great male writers in and out of the canon are pretty well covered in this work.
The editors explain that the historic reason for this type of response has been "part literary, part social." They write: "No writer develops in a vacuum; we all learn, initially, by studying and emulating our predecessors (though we may later rebel against them and disown their influence)."
This volume contains many conversations with the past. Gail White responds to "Medea" by Euripides (485-406 BC) with: "Why didn't I just carry off / his second wife and win her over?.." Instead, as the story goes, Medea took revenge on Jason by murdering King Creon, his daughter, and her own two sons (by Jason). Jason had abandoned Medea for King Creon's daughter.
White ends her response by saying, "But anger carries a sharp sword — / the better thought came one day later."
Later, in her "Thomas Hardy, Under Glass," June Owens responds to Hardy's "I Look into My Glass" by writing: "I am a simple soul and so think this: / Love is a lens that sees the heart, the glass / Through which Man dreams and ultimately hopes."
The editors further explain these literary conversations by saying, "We talk to the dead — or to contemporaries we might never actually meet. In doing so, we connect ourselves to the literary continuum and claim our place on the family tree."
By collecting these responses by 90 women, with so many various backgrounds and beliefs, the editors have transformed the vision of the Muse. As Jean LeBlanc writes, in her response to W. B. Yeats' "A Prayer for My Daughter": "Born with awareness, daughters of the world, / with fire within, your vision is your own."
In Classical mythology, the "Muse" is one of the nine (originally three) Greek goddesses who preside over literature and the arts. Through time, male writers have invoked the Muse as an inspirational force...
In this book, Katherine McAlpine and Gail White bring together works that respond to the Muse archetype. As the editors explain: "In studying the male poetic canon ... we find few women with identities, minds and agendas of their own, few flesh-and-blood heroines like Chaucer's Wife of Bath."
As the editors say, though, "Old archetypes die hard." But, the works in this volume strike back at the stereotypical view the canon has created. These works rewrite literary history by creating different voices to put with all of the faces and names that have become so familiar: the Biblical Eve, Lot's wife, Dante's Beatrice, Wordsworth's Lucy, Poe's Annabel Lee, and so many others. These works, and many others, are reevaluated, with the view of rethinking the works from a different point of view.
Starting with Biblical sources and moving through the Greek writers, Medieval and Renaissance times, the 17th century, 18th century, and beyond, the works also range in tone and approach. Some are angry ... Some are humorous. But all provide another view into the character of the Muse, the focal point of the poem. Some even provide an interesting view into the writer himself ...
The writers to whom these responses are directed range from Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid to Dante, Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Thomas Wyatt, William Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, John Milton, Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, William Butler Yeats, and many more.
All the great male writers in and out of the canon are pretty well covered in this work.
The editors explain that the historic reason for this type of response has been "part literary, part social." They write: "No writer develops in a vacuum; we all learn, initially, by studying and emulating our predecessors (though we may later rebel against them and disown their influence)."
This volume contains many conversations with the past. Gail White responds to "Medea" by Euripides (485-406 BC) with: "Why didn't I just carry off / his second wife and win her over?.." Instead, as the story goes, Medea took revenge on Jason by murdering King Creon, his daughter, and her own two sons (by Jason). Jason had abandoned Medea for King Creon's daughter.
White ends her response by saying, "But anger carries a sharp sword — / the better thought came one day later."
Later, in her "Thomas Hardy, Under Glass," June Owens responds to Hardy's "I Look into My Glass" by writing: "I am a simple soul and so think this: / Love is a lens that sees the heart, the glass / Through which Man dreams and ultimately hopes."
The editors further explain these literary conversations by saying, "We talk to the dead — or to contemporaries we might never actually meet. In doing so, we connect ourselves to the literary continuum and claim our place on the family tree."
By collecting these responses by 90 women, with so many various backgrounds and beliefs, the editors have transformed the vision of the Muse. As Jean LeBlanc writes, in her response to W. B. Yeats' "A Prayer for My Daughter": "Born with awareness, daughters of the world, / with fire within, your vision is your own."
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