Refiguring the Muse

Front Cover
P. Lang, 1999 - History - 186 pages
Although the muse is an integral element in discussions of poetic creation, no extended study before Refiguring the Muse has addressed the role of this figure in French literature. This work focuses on the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé, Albert Samain, Sully Prudhomme, Anna de Noailles, and Renée Vivien and takes as its central concern the relationships between poetic expression and the social, cultural, and historical representations of gender between 1870 and 1914. Dr. Levy's approach to the subject is twofold. First, she redefines the term «muse» in order to take into account the changes that the word has undergone within the French historical and literary context since the thirteenth century. Then, she shows how the figure of the poetic muse itself changes and begins to be liberated from the nineteenth-century concept that had kept the trope frozen in a passive role. The discussion is contextualized through an examination of the evolution of the muse from Baudelaire through the Surrealists and ultimately demonstrates how the poetic muse changed at the turn of the century.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION
1
THE WOMAN MUSE
25
MUSES AND INSPIRATION
67
Copyright

5 other sections not shown

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About the author (1999)

The Author: Gayle A. Levy is Associate Professor of French at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She studied at the University of California at Berkeley, The Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University where she received her Ph.D. in French Literature. Her work has appeared in Contemporary French Studies, South Atlantic Quarterly, College Literature, and Cahiers de Recherches des Instituts Néerlandais. She has contributed translations to the forthcoming edition of Les Lieux de Mémoire, edited by Pierre Nora.