Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition

Download or read book Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition written by Lawrence Lipking and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1988-09-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of poetic tradition is a figure of abandonment, a woman forsaken and out of control. She appears in writings ancient and modern, in the East and the West, in high art and popular culture produced by women and by men. What accounts for her perennial fascination? What is her function—in poems and for writers? Lawrence Lipking suggests many possibilities. In this figure he finds a partial record of women's experience, an instrument for the expression of religious love and yearning, a voice for psychological fears, and, finally, a model for the poet. Abandoned women inspire new ways of reading poems and poetic tradition.