The Variation of Traditional Love Sonnets: Imitation, Mimesis, and Deviation in Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.
2004
Hochschulschrift
Zugriff:
92
This thesis is an attempt to “redeem” or re-evaluate the alleged traditional love sonnet of Lady Mary Wroth─Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. Lady Wroth’s utilization/ appropriation of the sonnet and the “ free” advertisement from the Sidney family always make the reading public categorize her sequence one of the Petrarchan love sonnet sequences. However, I would like to suggest that Wroth’s taking advantage of the Sidney, family prestige, and her imitation of the past tradition considering the tear-shedding of the lover-poetess, the battle image of love, the unattainable beloved and still more are merely strategic devices for her to procure a chance to speak. In my Introduction, I will try to historicize the gender of femininity to shed light on how a woman, in Wroth’s period of time, has to suffer and endure in numerous perspectives including receiving education, marriage, daily routine job, manners, family affairs, and, especially, female literacy. Besides, my major theory of Luce Irigaray’s “ mimesis” will be also introduced to suggest that Lady Wroth’s “ orthodox” resemblances and choices of using a quite masculine genre, sonnet, are, according to Irigaray, to imitate to essentially thwart it. In my following chapter, the origin as well as the “ fashioning” process of the sonnet and machinery will be examined to first set up the conventional sonnet canonical norms. After introducing the paradigms underpinned by Wroth’s literary fathers and even grandfathers, Wroth’s “ must” imitation from the past tradition and her obedience will be further presented to exhibit her inseparable bond with the colossus of past convention. Chapter Two will, however, focuses on Wroth’s mimicry and deviation. To echo my major theory of mimesis, I will present a rather noncompliant sonnet lover-poetess, Pamphilia, whose surface imitation, presented in my 1st Chapter, as well as tactical digression have posed great challenge to the traditional prototypes of sonnet tradition and how a sonnet is supposed to be written. And, this sense of defiance serves as fissures for Wroth to speak and to be a female author which is almost not possible in her contemporary life. Chapter Three is about how Wroth, in a more specific way, being positioned in a metaphorically vicious labyrinth where feminine utterance and literacy are always opposite to the desire of the misogynist reading and living environment, uses her secret weapons, the pursuit of room and sisterhood, to maneuver with the society. Last of all, pointing out the 6th Edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature (which is still the most used textbook in Taiwan’s English Literature survey courses), Professor Krontiris’s current argument in her Oppositional Voices: Women as writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance, and May Paulissen’s The Love Sonnets of Lady Mary Wroth: A Critical Introduction, my Conclusion is served to “ right” several unfair/ inadequate wrong done on Wroth and her unique sonnet sequence─Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.
Titel: |
The Variation of Traditional Love Sonnets: Imitation, Mimesis, and Deviation in Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Wu, Alex ; 吳建毅 |
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Veröffentlichung: | 2004 |
Medientyp: | Hochschulschrift |
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