by Lawrence Lipking
University of Chicago Press, 1988
Cloth: 978-0-226-48452-5 | Paper: 978-0-226-48454-9
Library of Congress Classification PN1103.L56 1988
Dewey Decimal Classification 809.19352042

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ABOUT THIS BOOK
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.