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In emphasizing the resignifying moments within the reigning discourse of love, this study acknowledges the tyranny to women that most Petrarchan poems impose. But it also searches out "alternative domains of cultural intelligibility" (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 1990) in some Petrarchan poems to ask why Petrarch, Wyatt, Donne, and Marvell locate their questions about sexuality, society, and poetry in the woman they imagine for the construct. Paper edition (unseen), $18.95. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Laura: Uncovering Gender and Genre in Wyatt, Donne, and Marvell FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
In emphasizing the resignifying moments within the reigning discourse of love, this study acknowledges the tyranny to women that most Petrarchan poems impose. But it also searches out of cultural intelligibility in some Petrarchan poems to ask why Petrarch, Wyatt, Donne, and Marvell locate their questions about sexuality, society, and poetry in the woman they imagine for the construct. Paper edition (unseen), $18.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Choice
This bold and provocative study presents a systematic and wholesale
revaluation of Petrarch's love poetry and of the movement called
Petrarchism, especially with reference to selected lyric poems in 16th- and
17th-century England. . . . Rarely has the alignment between postmodern
theory and textual analysis been so well enacted. . . Very highly
recommended.
Renaissance Quarterly
Estrin often demonstrates beautifully how lyric subjectivity grapples with
questions of gender. . . . Laura contributes vividly to the current project
of examining our assumptions about the representations of women in lyric
poetry; for this reason, and for its generous, intelligent readings of
poems, the book will prove valuable to scholars of gender studies, genre
studies, and English and continental early modern poetry.
Early Modern Literary Studies
[T]he intellectual joy and energy with which Estrin leaps into her subject
opens this text to its reader. It is a complex book, deeply infused with a
sense of purpose: nothing less than the re-visioning . . . of the
Petrarchan tradition. As such, it is an important, perhaps essential, piece
of scholarship in the current reassessment of Renaissance
Petrarchism.
Studies in English Literature
In its most original achievement . . . Estrin's book preempts feminist
narratives about the construction of the woman by the male poet, suggesting
instead how the male poet is constructed by the woman who is 'always
already' part of his identity. . . . This is an argument whose import lies
deeply in the realm of the imaginary and really concerns the poet's "muse."Read all 6 "From The Critics" >
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