Publicação
Melancholy and the poetic self in early modern women’s poetry
| Resumo: | The habit of melancholy in the early modern period engendered medical inquiry, selfexamination, and artistic reverberations. The theory of the humours, combined with Aristotle’s dovetailing of melancholy and genius, exerted enormous influence on attitudes towards melancholy. Melancholy became, then, a desirable attribute, and the figure of the atrabilious man something to emulate. Women, however, because of their disorderly bodies and unruly emotions, were largely excluded from the tradition of melancholy. Their presumed irrationality precluded them from partaking in its artistic associations. Therefore, the atrabilious woman was not a woman of great intellectual capabilities, but simply a sick woman suffering from pathological melancholia. So far, it is the tradition of melancholy in poetry written by men that has been the subject of scholarly analysis and scrutiny, and only in recent years has there been a greater effort to include women poets in this major tradition. This dissertation examines a selection of poems by English women writing in the early modern period, such as Aemilia Lanyer, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Lock, Mary Sidney, and Katherine Philips, and attempts to determine how melancholy is experienced, performed, and deployed in their work, and also to what extent conceptions of melancholy are gendered. The question of women’s marginalised place in society and usual relegation to the domestic sphere is of central importance in exploring to what degree the politicisation of melancholy as subversive device figures in their poetry. The absence of agency plays an important part in the ways early modern English women poets use melancholy to challenge preconceived notions of womanhood and manipulate it in order to self-fashion representation. |
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| Autores principais: | Monteiro, Ana Catarina de Brito |
| Assunto: | Melancholy Early modern England Women Poets Agency Religion Mourning Melancolia Renascimento inglês Poetas femininas Iniciativa Religião Luto |
| Ano: | 2017 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | dissertação de mestrado |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso restrito |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | The habit of melancholy in the early modern period engendered medical inquiry, selfexamination, and artistic reverberations. The theory of the humours, combined with Aristotle’s dovetailing of melancholy and genius, exerted enormous influence on attitudes towards melancholy. Melancholy became, then, a desirable attribute, and the figure of the atrabilious man something to emulate. Women, however, because of their disorderly bodies and unruly emotions, were largely excluded from the tradition of melancholy. Their presumed irrationality precluded them from partaking in its artistic associations. Therefore, the atrabilious woman was not a woman of great intellectual capabilities, but simply a sick woman suffering from pathological melancholia. So far, it is the tradition of melancholy in poetry written by men that has been the subject of scholarly analysis and scrutiny, and only in recent years has there been a greater effort to include women poets in this major tradition. This dissertation examines a selection of poems by English women writing in the early modern period, such as Aemilia Lanyer, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Lock, Mary Sidney, and Katherine Philips, and attempts to determine how melancholy is experienced, performed, and deployed in their work, and also to what extent conceptions of melancholy are gendered. The question of women’s marginalised place in society and usual relegation to the domestic sphere is of central importance in exploring to what degree the politicisation of melancholy as subversive device figures in their poetry. The absence of agency plays an important part in the ways early modern English women poets use melancholy to challenge preconceived notions of womanhood and manipulate it in order to self-fashion representation. |
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