Joseph M. Hassett
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582907
- eISBN:
- 9780191723216
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582907.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Chapter 6 explores the fascinating transition in Yeats's relationship with his Muse that accompanied the subsidence of his wife's role as an oracle and the fading of the erotic dimension of their ...
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Chapter 6 explores the fascinating transition in Yeats's relationship with his Muse that accompanied the subsidence of his wife's role as an oracle and the fading of the erotic dimension of their marriage. Yeats's unease about the apparent loss of his Muse is apparent in ‘The Tower,’ in which he laments the apparent need to ‘bid the Muse go pack.’ Instead, Yeats found a new way to adhere to his early decision to find in his experiences as lover the emotion that would open the door to inspiration. Lacking a living Muse, but knowing that the Muses are the daughters of memory, he plumbed memories of past love to find new inspirational energy in the possibility of continuing past loves beyond the grave and restoring them in a way that defied time. A study of the drafts of ‘Sailing to Byzanthium’ shows how that lofty philosophical poem arose out of Yeats's meditation on past loves in ‘A Man Young and Old’ and his defiant effort to transform his earthly Muses into timeless singing masters of his soul. The same urge is apparent in the Crazy Jane poems, in which Yeats, speaking in the feminine voice of his own Muse, insists that ‘All things remain in God.’ Inspired by the idea of his timeless Muses, Yeats insists in ‘The Results of Thought’ that his poetic power can return his Muses to ‘all their wholesome strength.’ Toward the end of this period, Yeats experiences his eternal Muses so powerfully that he insists that he himself is ‘self‐born, born anew.’Less
Chapter 6 explores the fascinating transition in Yeats's relationship with his Muse that accompanied the subsidence of his wife's role as an oracle and the fading of the erotic dimension of their marriage. Yeats's unease about the apparent loss of his Muse is apparent in ‘The Tower,’ in which he laments the apparent need to ‘bid the Muse go pack.’ Instead, Yeats found a new way to adhere to his early decision to find in his experiences as lover the emotion that would open the door to inspiration. Lacking a living Muse, but knowing that the Muses are the daughters of memory, he plumbed memories of past love to find new inspirational energy in the possibility of continuing past loves beyond the grave and restoring them in a way that defied time. A study of the drafts of ‘Sailing to Byzanthium’ shows how that lofty philosophical poem arose out of Yeats's meditation on past loves in ‘A Man Young and Old’ and his defiant effort to transform his earthly Muses into timeless singing masters of his soul. The same urge is apparent in the Crazy Jane poems, in which Yeats, speaking in the feminine voice of his own Muse, insists that ‘All things remain in God.’ Inspired by the idea of his timeless Muses, Yeats insists in ‘The Results of Thought’ that his poetic power can return his Muses to ‘all their wholesome strength.’ Toward the end of this period, Yeats experiences his eternal Muses so powerfully that he insists that he himself is ‘self‐born, born anew.’
Joseph M. Hassett
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582907
- eISBN:
- 9780191723216
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582907.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book explores how nine fascinating women inspired some of W.B. Yeats's most memorable poetry. Yeats's beliefs about poetic inspiration were remarkably akin to the Greek notion that a great poet ...
More
This book explores how nine fascinating women inspired some of W.B. Yeats's most memorable poetry. Yeats's beliefs about poetic inspiration were remarkably akin to the Greek notion that a great poet is inspired and possessed by the feminine voices of the Muses, daughters of all powerful Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. Influenced by the Pre‐Raphaelite idea of woman as ‘romantic and mysterious, still the priestess of her shrine,’ Yeats found his Muses in living women. The book examines the poetry inspired by these women in the context of the two principal Muse traditions, the Gnostic Wisdom tradition and the courtly love tradition of the troubadours, both of which can be understood as variants of the White Goddess theory propounded by Robert Graves. Given Yeats's belief that lyric poetry ‘is no rootless flower, but the speech of a man,’ exploring the relationship between poem and Muse brings new coherence to the poetry, illuminates the process of its creation, and unlocks the ‘second beauty’ to which Yeats referred when he said that ‘works of lyric genius, when the circumstances of their origin is known, gain a second a beauty, passing as it were out of literature and becoming life.’ As life emerges from the literature, the Muses are shown to be vibrant, accomplished personalities who shatter the stereotype of the Muse as a passive construct, and take their proper place as begetters of timeless poetry.Less
This book explores how nine fascinating women inspired some of W.B. Yeats's most memorable poetry. Yeats's beliefs about poetic inspiration were remarkably akin to the Greek notion that a great poet is inspired and possessed by the feminine voices of the Muses, daughters of all powerful Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. Influenced by the Pre‐Raphaelite idea of woman as ‘romantic and mysterious, still the priestess of her shrine,’ Yeats found his Muses in living women. The book examines the poetry inspired by these women in the context of the two principal Muse traditions, the Gnostic Wisdom tradition and the courtly love tradition of the troubadours, both of which can be understood as variants of the White Goddess theory propounded by Robert Graves. Given Yeats's belief that lyric poetry ‘is no rootless flower, but the speech of a man,’ exploring the relationship between poem and Muse brings new coherence to the poetry, illuminates the process of its creation, and unlocks the ‘second beauty’ to which Yeats referred when he said that ‘works of lyric genius, when the circumstances of their origin is known, gain a second a beauty, passing as it were out of literature and becoming life.’ As life emerges from the literature, the Muses are shown to be vibrant, accomplished personalities who shatter the stereotype of the Muse as a passive construct, and take their proper place as begetters of timeless poetry.
Joseph M. Hassett
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582907
- eISBN:
- 9780191723216
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582907.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Yeats's poems about Maud Gonne were consciously written in the courtly love tradition, ‘the old high way of love,’ as he called it in ‘Adam's Curse,’ Reading these poems as part of the courtly love ...
More
Yeats's poems about Maud Gonne were consciously written in the courtly love tradition, ‘the old high way of love,’ as he called it in ‘Adam's Curse,’ Reading these poems as part of the courtly love tradition explains how Yeats found the endurance required for a nearly fruitless, twenty‐eight‐year pursuit of Gonne. Her unattainability was a sine qua non of the courtly tradition, in which to win the beloved is to lose her. Gonne understood this perfectly. In rejecting one of Yeats's proposals, she focused sharply on her role as Muse, saying ‘You make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and you are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry.’ Yeats's deeply moving poem ‘Words’ meditates on his understanding that the turmoil engendered by his Muse powered his poetic engine, and that, were it not for the turmoil, there might have been no poetry: ‘I might have thrown poor words away/And been content to live.’ Chapter 3 explores Yeats's memorable poems to Gonne in terms of the differing ways she functioned as Muse over the course of their long relationship. Readings of classic poems about Gonne show how Yeats propelled his poetic career by casting himself as Dante to Gonne's Beatrice and using what he memorably called ‘the suffering of desire’ to open the door to inspiration. Chapter 3 shows how the various Gonne poems arranged themselves around Yeats's conclusion that, by his forty‐ninth year, ‘for a barren passion's sake,’ he had no child, but he did have a ‘book’ — a formidable corpus of poetry fashioned from the agony of desire.Less
Yeats's poems about Maud Gonne were consciously written in the courtly love tradition, ‘the old high way of love,’ as he called it in ‘Adam's Curse,’ Reading these poems as part of the courtly love tradition explains how Yeats found the endurance required for a nearly fruitless, twenty‐eight‐year pursuit of Gonne. Her unattainability was a sine qua non of the courtly tradition, in which to win the beloved is to lose her. Gonne understood this perfectly. In rejecting one of Yeats's proposals, she focused sharply on her role as Muse, saying ‘You make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and you are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry.’ Yeats's deeply moving poem ‘Words’ meditates on his understanding that the turmoil engendered by his Muse powered his poetic engine, and that, were it not for the turmoil, there might have been no poetry: ‘I might have thrown poor words away/And been content to live.’ Chapter 3 explores Yeats's memorable poems to Gonne in terms of the differing ways she functioned as Muse over the course of their long relationship. Readings of classic poems about Gonne show how Yeats propelled his poetic career by casting himself as Dante to Gonne's Beatrice and using what he memorably called ‘the suffering of desire’ to open the door to inspiration. Chapter 3 shows how the various Gonne poems arranged themselves around Yeats's conclusion that, by his forty‐ninth year, ‘for a barren passion's sake,’ he had no child, but he did have a ‘book’ — a formidable corpus of poetry fashioned from the agony of desire.
Joseph M. Hassett
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582907
- eISBN:
- 9780191723216
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582907.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Yeats's experimentation with the ideas developed in Per Amica and A Vision took a startling turn in June 1935 when he met Dorothy Wellesley. His letters to Wellesley reflect beliefs that her role as ...
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Yeats's experimentation with the ideas developed in Per Amica and A Vision took a startling turn in June 1935 when he met Dorothy Wellesley. His letters to Wellesley reflect beliefs that her role as Muse would be colored by her lesbianism, and that her Muse was located at the intersection of what he perceived as the masculine and feminine aspects of her personality. ‘What makes your work so good’, he wrote her, is its masculine element amid so much feminine charm. Your lines have the magnificent swing of your boyish body. I wish I could be a girl of nineteen for certain hours that I might feel it even more acutely. He had already suggested to Wellesley that his own creativity arose out of ‘the woman in me.’ ‘To Dorothy Wellesley’ suggests that Wellesley's Muses are Furies, primitive earth goddesses who, as Erich Neumann has shown, represent angry emotional forces that are opposite to those of the Muses but, because of the tendency of opposites to merge into each other, can be forerunners of inspiration. Yeats's own Muse was now a Fury as well. The beast of hatred had replaced concentration on Gonne as the besom that could clear his soul and open the way to inspiration. Chapter 8 explains how the manifestation of what Adorno called ‘late style,’ the lust and rage described in a poem (‘The Spur’) Yeats sent to Wellesley, threatened to dominate his relationship with his Muse.Less
Yeats's experimentation with the ideas developed in Per Amica and A Vision took a startling turn in June 1935 when he met Dorothy Wellesley. His letters to Wellesley reflect beliefs that her role as Muse would be colored by her lesbianism, and that her Muse was located at the intersection of what he perceived as the masculine and feminine aspects of her personality. ‘What makes your work so good’, he wrote her, is its masculine element amid so much feminine charm. Your lines have the magnificent swing of your boyish body. I wish I could be a girl of nineteen for certain hours that I might feel it even more acutely. He had already suggested to Wellesley that his own creativity arose out of ‘the woman in me.’ ‘To Dorothy Wellesley’ suggests that Wellesley's Muses are Furies, primitive earth goddesses who, as Erich Neumann has shown, represent angry emotional forces that are opposite to those of the Muses but, because of the tendency of opposites to merge into each other, can be forerunners of inspiration. Yeats's own Muse was now a Fury as well. The beast of hatred had replaced concentration on Gonne as the besom that could clear his soul and open the way to inspiration. Chapter 8 explains how the manifestation of what Adorno called ‘late style,’ the lust and rage described in a poem (‘The Spur’) Yeats sent to Wellesley, threatened to dominate his relationship with his Muse.
H. L. Meakin
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184553
- eISBN:
- 9780191674297
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184553.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This book is a historical and theoretical study of some of John Donne's less frequently discussed poetry and prose; it interrogates various trends that have dominated Donne criticism, such as the ...
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This book is a historical and theoretical study of some of John Donne's less frequently discussed poetry and prose; it interrogates various trends that have dominated Donne criticism, such as the widely divergent views about his attitudes towards women, the focus on the Songs and Sonnets to the exclusion of his other works, and the tendency to separate discussions of his poetry and prose. On a broader scale, it joins a small but growing number of feminist re-readings of Donne's works. Using the cultural criticism of French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray, the book explores works throughout Donne's career, from his earliest verse letters to sermons preached while Divinity Reader at Lincoln's Inn and Dean of St. Paul's in London. Donne's articulations of four feminine figures in particular are examined: the Muse, Sappho, Eve as ‘the mother of mankind’, and a young girl who lived and died in Donne's own time, Elizabeth Drury. The book's reading of Donne's self-described ‘masculine persuasive force’ asserting itself upon the ‘incomprehensibleness’ of the feminine suggests that the Donne canon needs to be reassessed as even richer and more complex than previously asserted, and that his reputation as a supreme Renaissance poet — revived at the beginning of this century — needs to be carried into the next.Less
This book is a historical and theoretical study of some of John Donne's less frequently discussed poetry and prose; it interrogates various trends that have dominated Donne criticism, such as the widely divergent views about his attitudes towards women, the focus on the Songs and Sonnets to the exclusion of his other works, and the tendency to separate discussions of his poetry and prose. On a broader scale, it joins a small but growing number of feminist re-readings of Donne's works. Using the cultural criticism of French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray, the book explores works throughout Donne's career, from his earliest verse letters to sermons preached while Divinity Reader at Lincoln's Inn and Dean of St. Paul's in London. Donne's articulations of four feminine figures in particular are examined: the Muse, Sappho, Eve as ‘the mother of mankind’, and a young girl who lived and died in Donne's own time, Elizabeth Drury. The book's reading of Donne's self-described ‘masculine persuasive force’ asserting itself upon the ‘incomprehensibleness’ of the feminine suggests that the Donne canon needs to be reassessed as even richer and more complex than previously asserted, and that his reputation as a supreme Renaissance poet — revived at the beginning of this century — needs to be carried into the next.
H. L. Meakin
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184553
- eISBN:
- 9780191674297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184553.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter examines John Donne's representations of his relationship with his Muse in his poetry and early verse letters. Almost half of the twenty-two references to a Muse occurred in the verse ...
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This chapter examines John Donne's representations of his relationship with his Muse in his poetry and early verse letters. Almost half of the twenty-two references to a Muse occurred in the verse letters Donne wrote during the 1590s. This may indicate that his adaptation of the Muse figure during the Renaissance may be connected with generic experimentation and the self-conscious definition of a specifically English poetry. This chapter also analyses Donne's gender-related images of poetic creation in his early poems.Less
This chapter examines John Donne's representations of his relationship with his Muse in his poetry and early verse letters. Almost half of the twenty-two references to a Muse occurred in the verse letters Donne wrote during the 1590s. This may indicate that his adaptation of the Muse figure during the Renaissance may be connected with generic experimentation and the self-conscious definition of a specifically English poetry. This chapter also analyses Donne's gender-related images of poetic creation in his early poems.
Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195157239
- eISBN:
- 9780199849680
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195157239.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter surveys the autobiographical writings of Spanish America's most famous nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In a series of letters to New Spanish clergy from 1682 to 1691, Sor Juana used the ...
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This chapter surveys the autobiographical writings of Spanish America's most famous nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In a series of letters to New Spanish clergy from 1682 to 1691, Sor Juana used the epistolary genre, the letter, to define her role and beliefs about religious vocation. In the most famous of these letters, the Respuesta to the bishop of Puebla, Sor Juana combined the rhetorical possibilities of the letter with those of the confessional vida. She redefined the model nun to be one who used God's gifts, which in the case of the intellectually gifted meant following a life of study. Because the path to salvation required using one's gifts, the perfecta religiosa for Sor Juana became the religiosa letrada, a learned nun. This rewriting of the traditional ideology for nuns provoked a crisis.Less
This chapter surveys the autobiographical writings of Spanish America's most famous nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In a series of letters to New Spanish clergy from 1682 to 1691, Sor Juana used the epistolary genre, the letter, to define her role and beliefs about religious vocation. In the most famous of these letters, the Respuesta to the bishop of Puebla, Sor Juana combined the rhetorical possibilities of the letter with those of the confessional vida. She redefined the model nun to be one who used God's gifts, which in the case of the intellectually gifted meant following a life of study. Because the path to salvation required using one's gifts, the perfecta religiosa for Sor Juana became the religiosa letrada, a learned nun. This rewriting of the traditional ideology for nuns provoked a crisis.
Susan Wiseman
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199205127
- eISBN:
- 9780191709579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199205127.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines women's place in the mid-seventeenth century understanding of politics, what might be called the political imaginary, from distinct, even opposite, vantage points. It pursues ...
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This chapter examines women's place in the mid-seventeenth century understanding of politics, what might be called the political imaginary, from distinct, even opposite, vantage points. It pursues the question of the way women's poetry imagines politics. Discussing the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and Lucy Hutchinson, this chapter investigates the political and poetic projects of these far from royalist poets during the upheavals of the 1650s and 1660s. Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse gives a disciplined typological poetic history, starting with elements and humours, and building up to an analysis of national histories that uses fifth monarchist ideas. Fifth monarchist ideas were long-lived, widespread, and part of controversies over church discipline and the future of the republic. Hutchinson is relatively unusual because of her deep and rigorous engagement with the materials of elite masculine culture. Most of her extensive writings remained in manuscript throughout her life.Less
This chapter examines women's place in the mid-seventeenth century understanding of politics, what might be called the political imaginary, from distinct, even opposite, vantage points. It pursues the question of the way women's poetry imagines politics. Discussing the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and Lucy Hutchinson, this chapter investigates the political and poetic projects of these far from royalist poets during the upheavals of the 1650s and 1660s. Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse gives a disciplined typological poetic history, starting with elements and humours, and building up to an analysis of national histories that uses fifth monarchist ideas. Fifth monarchist ideas were long-lived, widespread, and part of controversies over church discipline and the future of the republic. Hutchinson is relatively unusual because of her deep and rigorous engagement with the materials of elite masculine culture. Most of her extensive writings remained in manuscript throughout her life.
Penny Murray
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199237944
- eISBN:
- 9780191706455
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199237944.003.0014
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Religions
The image of the Muse as loved object who inspires the male artist, whilst she herself remains silent, is deeply engrained in contemporary culture, despite the best efforts of feminist critics to ...
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The image of the Muse as loved object who inspires the male artist, whilst she herself remains silent, is deeply engrained in contemporary culture, despite the best efforts of feminist critics to expose the implications of such imagery: man creates, woman inspires; man is the maker, woman the vehicle of male fantasy, an object created by the male imagination, incapable of any kind of agency herself. In short, this image of the Muse denies woman's active participation in artistic creation and silences female creativity. This chapter examines the significance of the Muses' gender and the various ways their femininity has contributed to their reception, focusing on 18th-century London society when the Muse was a favourite theme in art. In Richard Samuel's 18th-century painting The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain, a model for reclaiming the image of the Muse as an emblem of female capability is identified. Contemporary women's poetry continues to rework classical myth.Less
The image of the Muse as loved object who inspires the male artist, whilst she herself remains silent, is deeply engrained in contemporary culture, despite the best efforts of feminist critics to expose the implications of such imagery: man creates, woman inspires; man is the maker, woman the vehicle of male fantasy, an object created by the male imagination, incapable of any kind of agency herself. In short, this image of the Muse denies woman's active participation in artistic creation and silences female creativity. This chapter examines the significance of the Muses' gender and the various ways their femininity has contributed to their reception, focusing on 18th-century London society when the Muse was a favourite theme in art. In Richard Samuel's 18th-century painting The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain, a model for reclaiming the image of the Muse as an emblem of female capability is identified. Contemporary women's poetry continues to rework classical myth.
Günter Leypoldt
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635740
- eISBN:
- 9780748651658
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635740.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter takes a look at Whitman's programmatic connection of political freedom and free verse, introducing the ‘Whig histories’ of democratic progress, and discussing liberty and culture in the ...
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This chapter takes a look at Whitman's programmatic connection of political freedom and free verse, introducing the ‘Whig histories’ of democratic progress, and discussing liberty and culture in the British Enlightenment. It studies the Whig aesthetics, US discourse, and Alexis de Tocqueville's democracy in America. The chapter also considers the relationship between romanticism and transcendentalism, before finally discussing the involvement of the Democratic Muse in the liberalist notions of variety or diversity as sources of cultural health.Less
This chapter takes a look at Whitman's programmatic connection of political freedom and free verse, introducing the ‘Whig histories’ of democratic progress, and discussing liberty and culture in the British Enlightenment. It studies the Whig aesthetics, US discourse, and Alexis de Tocqueville's democracy in America. The chapter also considers the relationship between romanticism and transcendentalism, before finally discussing the involvement of the Democratic Muse in the liberalist notions of variety or diversity as sources of cultural health.
Felicity Chaplin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526109538
- eISBN:
- 9781526128263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526109538.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The Parisienne is often described as muse, not only to painters, poets and writers, but also fashion designers, musicians and filmmakers. This chapter argues that films treating the Parisienne type ...
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The Parisienne is often described as muse, not only to painters, poets and writers, but also fashion designers, musicians and filmmakers. This chapter argues that films treating the Parisienne type as muse reveal that the type exists between representation and reality, inhabiting an interstitial space between art and life. Parisienne muses share recognisable iconographical motifs. They are: fashionable; elusive, insofar as they are not able to be possessed by any man or adequately rendered by any artist; highly constructed aesthetic objects, the result of multiple depictions in painting and literature; and self-fashioning, mainly through attention to costume and gesture. While she inspires male artists, the Parisienne muse cannot be reduced to the modern or Romantic conception of the muse as passive object of male desire or artistic construction. Rather, she conforms more to the classical ideal of the muse as active in relation to the artist as passive receptor of inspiration.
This chapter looks at these motifs as they are taken up in three films: Jean Renoir’s Elena et les hommes (1956), Raúl Ruiz’s Klimt (2006), and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2010).Less
The Parisienne is often described as muse, not only to painters, poets and writers, but also fashion designers, musicians and filmmakers. This chapter argues that films treating the Parisienne type as muse reveal that the type exists between representation and reality, inhabiting an interstitial space between art and life. Parisienne muses share recognisable iconographical motifs. They are: fashionable; elusive, insofar as they are not able to be possessed by any man or adequately rendered by any artist; highly constructed aesthetic objects, the result of multiple depictions in painting and literature; and self-fashioning, mainly through attention to costume and gesture. While she inspires male artists, the Parisienne muse cannot be reduced to the modern or Romantic conception of the muse as passive object of male desire or artistic construction. Rather, she conforms more to the classical ideal of the muse as active in relation to the artist as passive receptor of inspiration.
This chapter looks at these motifs as they are taken up in three films: Jean Renoir’s Elena et les hommes (1956), Raúl Ruiz’s Klimt (2006), and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2010).
Graham T. Dozier
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781469618746
- eISBN:
- 9781469618760
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469618746.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
Thomas Henry Carter was born in 1831 at Pampatike in King William County, Virginia. His parents, Thomas Nelson Carter and Juliet Muse Gaines Carter, occupied a prominent position among the leading ...
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Thomas Henry Carter was born in 1831 at Pampatike in King William County, Virginia. His parents, Thomas Nelson Carter and Juliet Muse Gaines Carter, occupied a prominent position among the leading families in Virginia. Thomas Carter spent most of his life on farming. In the fall of 1846, he enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute, a military college in Lexington, and underwent a strict combination of academic and military training. After graduation, Carter enrolled in the medical school at the University of Virginia for the 1850–1851 session. In June 1851 he received the degree of doctor of medicine. Carter continued his medical education at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, he chose to practice his skills at the Blockley Almshouse sometime in the fall of 1852. In 1854 or early in 1855, he met Susan Elizabeth Roy, and they got married in November 1855. Six years later, he voted in support of secession before forming an artillery battery. On June 22, 1861, Carter wrote the first of his many wartime letters to his wife Susan.Less
Thomas Henry Carter was born in 1831 at Pampatike in King William County, Virginia. His parents, Thomas Nelson Carter and Juliet Muse Gaines Carter, occupied a prominent position among the leading families in Virginia. Thomas Carter spent most of his life on farming. In the fall of 1846, he enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute, a military college in Lexington, and underwent a strict combination of academic and military training. After graduation, Carter enrolled in the medical school at the University of Virginia for the 1850–1851 session. In June 1851 he received the degree of doctor of medicine. Carter continued his medical education at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, he chose to practice his skills at the Blockley Almshouse sometime in the fall of 1852. In 1854 or early in 1855, he met Susan Elizabeth Roy, and they got married in November 1855. Six years later, he voted in support of secession before forming an artillery battery. On June 22, 1861, Carter wrote the first of his many wartime letters to his wife Susan.
Richard Salmon
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853236740
- eISBN:
- 9781846314285
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853236740.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Friedrich Schiller famously defended the redemptive social value of art as autonomous aesthetic illusion, offering a suggestive proleptic commentary on the close connection between aestheticism and a ...
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Friedrich Schiller famously defended the redemptive social value of art as autonomous aesthetic illusion, offering a suggestive proleptic commentary on the close connection between aestheticism and a certain logic of translatability in the late nineteenth century. This chapter explores the transpositional logic of aestheticism by focusing on Henry James's ‘translation’ of Walter Pater's aesthetic theory into the fictive form of Gabriel Nash, one of the characters in his 1890 novel The Tragic Muse. The Tragic Muse shows James's simultaneous engagement in several different types of transposition. The chapter first looks at the aesthetic theory of Theodor Adorno, as well as his dialectical analysis of the tension between autonomous and politically-committed art evident in his 1962 essay ‘Commitment’. It then shows that Adorno's theory of aesthetic autonomy revives a debate on the transposed politics of aestheticism.Less
Friedrich Schiller famously defended the redemptive social value of art as autonomous aesthetic illusion, offering a suggestive proleptic commentary on the close connection between aestheticism and a certain logic of translatability in the late nineteenth century. This chapter explores the transpositional logic of aestheticism by focusing on Henry James's ‘translation’ of Walter Pater's aesthetic theory into the fictive form of Gabriel Nash, one of the characters in his 1890 novel The Tragic Muse. The Tragic Muse shows James's simultaneous engagement in several different types of transposition. The chapter first looks at the aesthetic theory of Theodor Adorno, as well as his dialectical analysis of the tension between autonomous and politically-committed art evident in his 1962 essay ‘Commitment’. It then shows that Adorno's theory of aesthetic autonomy revives a debate on the transposed politics of aestheticism.
Nathan Platte
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199371112
- eISBN:
- 9780199371136
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199371112.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, American
Selznick’s move to RKO in 1931 brought the producer in contact with music director Max Steiner. Through their collaborative relationship they defined and directed the role of symphonic underscore in ...
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Selznick’s move to RKO in 1931 brought the producer in contact with music director Max Steiner. Through their collaborative relationship they defined and directed the role of symphonic underscore in Hollywood. This chapter charts their systematic expansion of background scoring within individual films and the extension of this music beyond films in sheet music and concert performances. Special emphasis is placed on Symphony of Six Million (1932) and the “island-adventure trilogy” of Bird of Paradise (1932), The Most Dangerous Game (1932), and King Kong (1933). Tracking music’s role across these four films reveals how Steiner and Selznick’s experimental use of background scoring creatively reworked silent-era musical practices to produce a widely influential scoring model. Selznick’s RKO productions also feature critical but overlooked contributions from orchestrator Bernhard Kaun, sound engineer Murray Spivack, and African-American choral director Clarence Muse.Less
Selznick’s move to RKO in 1931 brought the producer in contact with music director Max Steiner. Through their collaborative relationship they defined and directed the role of symphonic underscore in Hollywood. This chapter charts their systematic expansion of background scoring within individual films and the extension of this music beyond films in sheet music and concert performances. Special emphasis is placed on Symphony of Six Million (1932) and the “island-adventure trilogy” of Bird of Paradise (1932), The Most Dangerous Game (1932), and King Kong (1933). Tracking music’s role across these four films reveals how Steiner and Selznick’s experimental use of background scoring creatively reworked silent-era musical practices to produce a widely influential scoring model. Selznick’s RKO productions also feature critical but overlooked contributions from orchestrator Bernhard Kaun, sound engineer Murray Spivack, and African-American choral director Clarence Muse.
Lars Morten Gram
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198829430
- eISBN:
- 9780191867958
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198829430.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter departs from the fact that Sappho was from Lesbos, and the name of Catullus’ beloved ‘Lesbia’ implies the same. Through an extensive analysis of the name of Lesbia in Catullus, in which ...
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This chapter departs from the fact that Sappho was from Lesbos, and the name of Catullus’ beloved ‘Lesbia’ implies the same. Through an extensive analysis of the name of Lesbia in Catullus, in which the reference to the Lesbian Sappho is important, this chapter shows how the insoluble tensions embedded in ‘Lesbia’ appear as a perfect embodiment of the poetic programme of Catullus. In addition to the Catullan poems where the figure of Lesbia occurs, this chapter investigates the phenomenon of fellatio, linked to λεσβιάζειν and hence potentially to ‘Lesbia’ in the ancient sources, as well as passages from Homer, Hesiod, Alcaeus and Aristophanes, Horace’s Epodes, a large number of epigrams from the Anthologia Palatina, as well as Ausonius’ epigram 71.Less
This chapter departs from the fact that Sappho was from Lesbos, and the name of Catullus’ beloved ‘Lesbia’ implies the same. Through an extensive analysis of the name of Lesbia in Catullus, in which the reference to the Lesbian Sappho is important, this chapter shows how the insoluble tensions embedded in ‘Lesbia’ appear as a perfect embodiment of the poetic programme of Catullus. In addition to the Catullan poems where the figure of Lesbia occurs, this chapter investigates the phenomenon of fellatio, linked to λεσβιάζειν and hence potentially to ‘Lesbia’ in the ancient sources, as well as passages from Homer, Hesiod, Alcaeus and Aristophanes, Horace’s Epodes, a large number of epigrams from the Anthologia Palatina, as well as Ausonius’ epigram 71.
Aara Suksi
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198744771
- eISBN:
- 9780191805936
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198744771.003.0012
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Religions, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
In Homeric epic, describing a map of the world, like epic song itself, is a privilege granted by the divine Muses and figured in Hephaestus’ shield-making. In two examples from Aeschylean tragedy, a ...
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In Homeric epic, describing a map of the world, like epic song itself, is a privilege granted by the divine Muses and figured in Hephaestus’ shield-making. In two examples from Aeschylean tragedy, a defiant hero appropriates the map-making prerogative of the gods established in Homeric epic. In each case, in a bid to restructure the existing order, the hero lays claim to the divine ability to map the space of the world without invoking the Muses. In Prometheus Bound, Prometheus’ gift of a map to mortal Io is not just an altruistic favour. It is also a part of his strategy for controlling and directing the future in a way that will ultimately lead to his own liberation. In Agamemnon, Clytemnestra uses Hephaestus’ fire to map space instantaneously. Her control of the god’s technology is aligned with her scandalous power over every other aspect of the action of the play.Less
In Homeric epic, describing a map of the world, like epic song itself, is a privilege granted by the divine Muses and figured in Hephaestus’ shield-making. In two examples from Aeschylean tragedy, a defiant hero appropriates the map-making prerogative of the gods established in Homeric epic. In each case, in a bid to restructure the existing order, the hero lays claim to the divine ability to map the space of the world without invoking the Muses. In Prometheus Bound, Prometheus’ gift of a map to mortal Io is not just an altruistic favour. It is also a part of his strategy for controlling and directing the future in a way that will ultimately lead to his own liberation. In Agamemnon, Clytemnestra uses Hephaestus’ fire to map space instantaneously. Her control of the god’s technology is aligned with her scandalous power over every other aspect of the action of the play.
Jill Timmons
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199861323
- eISBN:
- 9780190268336
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199861323.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Performing Practice/Studies
This chapter discusses the development of a personal artistic vision. Artistic “vision” comes from knowing what inspires to achieve something new. The Greek metaphor of “Muse” and Marion Woodman's ...
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This chapter discusses the development of a personal artistic vision. Artistic “vision” comes from knowing what inspires to achieve something new. The Greek metaphor of “Muse” and Marion Woodman's The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation are cited to further illustrate this artistic “vision.” The quest for that vision is difficult for most artists and so Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life provides an in-depth study on the ways an artist can find his vision. This chapter concludes with a narration of a musician's life story during his initial years in music education. This life story tells how the fitness of a physical body, mentors, and friends, as well as the musician's ability to acknowledge and face fears can help direct someone to create their own artistic vision.Less
This chapter discusses the development of a personal artistic vision. Artistic “vision” comes from knowing what inspires to achieve something new. The Greek metaphor of “Muse” and Marion Woodman's The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation are cited to further illustrate this artistic “vision.” The quest for that vision is difficult for most artists and so Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life provides an in-depth study on the ways an artist can find his vision. This chapter concludes with a narration of a musician's life story during his initial years in music education. This life story tells how the fitness of a physical body, mentors, and friends, as well as the musician's ability to acknowledge and face fears can help direct someone to create their own artistic vision.
John Carlos Rowe
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780195121353
- eISBN:
- 9780190252755
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195121353.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter examines Henry James's writings in the 1890s and into the new century, with emphasis on his international theme within the contexts of globalism, postmodernism, and cosmopolitanism. It ...
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This chapter examines Henry James's writings in the 1890s and into the new century, with emphasis on his international theme within the contexts of globalism, postmodernism, and cosmopolitanism. It suggests that James was a man of enormous contradictions and self-doubt, which is evident in his fiction such as The Tragic Muse, The Golden Bowl, and “Daisy Miller.”. It also discusses three ways to explore James and modernity relating to his responses to the modernization process and his emergence as a typical commodity of postmodern cultural capital. Finally, the chapter considers globalization within the context of European colonialism.Less
This chapter examines Henry James's writings in the 1890s and into the new century, with emphasis on his international theme within the contexts of globalism, postmodernism, and cosmopolitanism. It suggests that James was a man of enormous contradictions and self-doubt, which is evident in his fiction such as The Tragic Muse, The Golden Bowl, and “Daisy Miller.”. It also discusses three ways to explore James and modernity relating to his responses to the modernization process and his emergence as a typical commodity of postmodern cultural capital. Finally, the chapter considers globalization within the context of European colonialism.
Meredith E. Safran
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474440844
- eISBN:
- 9781474460279
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474440844.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The second chapter on refractions of the golden age of heroes examines the roller-disco cult classic Xanadu (1980), in which the kiss of a Muse inspires a frustrated commercial artist to save America ...
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The second chapter on refractions of the golden age of heroes examines the roller-disco cult classic Xanadu (1980), in which the kiss of a Muse inspires a frustrated commercial artist to save America from its late-1970s “iron age” by rejecting his corporate job and founding a socially inclusive nightclub. Safran explores how this project’s utopian potential becomes subsumed by contemporary nostalgia for America’s post-World War II prosperity and the “golden age” of the Hollywood studio system, signalled by quoting the filmography of Xanadu’s venerable co-star Gene Kelly. His particular brand of on-screen masculinity echoes ancient homosociality associated with the Hesiodic all-male golden age, the end of which is associated with the invention of women—much as Xanadu’s homosocial mentoring relationship is disrupted by the Muse. The young protagonist’s impossible romance with the goddess risks degrading his masculinity in light of her divinity, until the film refigures her as a prisoner of the divine realm and him as modern Orpheus who breaks into that realm to plead for his beloved’s return. His success not only bests his classical model but also recuperates him as a man, an artist, and a self-employed small business owner.Less
The second chapter on refractions of the golden age of heroes examines the roller-disco cult classic Xanadu (1980), in which the kiss of a Muse inspires a frustrated commercial artist to save America from its late-1970s “iron age” by rejecting his corporate job and founding a socially inclusive nightclub. Safran explores how this project’s utopian potential becomes subsumed by contemporary nostalgia for America’s post-World War II prosperity and the “golden age” of the Hollywood studio system, signalled by quoting the filmography of Xanadu’s venerable co-star Gene Kelly. His particular brand of on-screen masculinity echoes ancient homosociality associated with the Hesiodic all-male golden age, the end of which is associated with the invention of women—much as Xanadu’s homosocial mentoring relationship is disrupted by the Muse. The young protagonist’s impossible romance with the goddess risks degrading his masculinity in light of her divinity, until the film refigures her as a prisoner of the divine realm and him as modern Orpheus who breaks into that realm to plead for his beloved’s return. His success not only bests his classical model but also recuperates him as a man, an artist, and a self-employed small business owner.
