Sappho, Hegel and Michael Field: Paradox and desire in lyric III
This article offers a close reading of Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper’s lyric III in Long Ago, a Sapphic volume of verse published in 1889 under the collaborative nom de plume of Michael Field. This collection articulates a dramatic inquiry into the tragedy of unrequited love in a long cycle of lyrics whose third piece most effectively encapsulates the kernel of what the Fields reconstruct as Sappho’s ambivalent eroticism. The outcome of this reconstruction, as analysed in light of lyric III, is a consistent Hegelian view of desire that subsumes a complex system of tropes, myths, paradoxes and imaginative strategies under an overarching ideology of desire as a radical experience of appr…
The Myth of Eros in Michael Field’s Sapphic Project: from a New Materialism to a Tragic Determinism
espanolEl objetivo de este articulo consiste en examinar como Katharine Bradley y su sobrina Edith Cooper reinterpretan la figura de Safo en conexion directa con el mito de Eros en Long Ago (1889), el primer poemario que compusieron bajo el pseudonimo de Michael Field. Con este proposito en mente, seleccionamos una serie de poemas dirigidos a la deidad griega del amor, realizamos un analisis detallado de los mismos y demostramos que las Fields componen una mitografia dramatica que explora la identidad paradojica del dios y, al mismo tiempo, revela toda una verdad intemporal inherente al propio mito de Eros: el amor constituye un fenomeno ambivalente que crea, inspira y eleva tanto como dest…
“Come, Dark-eyed Sleep”: Michael Field and the Performance of the Lyric as a Radical Fantasy
This article seeks to illustrate how the Michael Fields articulate their Sapphic poetry in Long Ago (1889) not only in keeping with their own Shakespearean aspirations and with Robert Browning’s hybrid formula of dramatic lyrics, but also in connection with Jonathan Culler’s theory of the lyric as a performative genre. Much recent scholarship has broken ground in the rediscovery and reappraisal of the Fields’ literary stature, yet the general critical approach has been divisive in addressing their poetry and their verse dramas separately. Some critics have taken heed of how their lyrics in general exhibit an intrinsic dramatic temper, yet no systematic inquiry has discussed how this lyrical…