"Count Gismond: Aix in Provence" may, on one reading, be seen as a story of the vindication of innocence. A woman relates to a friend an episode of her own life, when a defender arose for her when she was caught in the toils woven by the unsuspected envy and hypocrisy of her cousins and Count Gauthier, who attempt to bring dishonor upon her on her birthday, with an accusation that she and Gauthier had been lovers. Her faith that the trial by combat between Gauthier and Gismond must end in Gismond's victory and her vindication reflects, in this reading, the medieval atmosphere of an idealised chivalrous France.
However an alternative reading of the poem, suggested by various hints in the verse (e.g. the absence of the narrator's denial of her relationship with Gauthier, the evasive way she breaks off her story when Gismond arrives), hints that the woman may be an 'unreliable narrator', as in the poem 'My Last Duchess'.
On a third interpretation, the ambiguity between these two readings is the poem's major attribute.[2]
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), written by British philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the eighteenth century who did not believe women should receive a rational education. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologised after her death; her work received renewed attention following the feminist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, and greater recognition of women writers in English.
Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.
The Song of Songs, also called the Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon, is an erotic poem, one of the five megillot ('scrolls') in the Ketuvim ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh. It is unique within the Hebrew Bible: it shows no interest in Law or Covenant or the God of Israel, nor does it teach or explore wisdom like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes ; instead, it celebrates sexual love, giving "the voices of two lovers, praising each other, yearning for each other, proffering invitations to enjoy".
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.
Marie de France was a poet, possibly born in what is now France, who lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an unknown court, but she and her work were almost certainly known at the royal court of King Henry II of England. Virtually nothing is known of her life; both her given name and its geographical specification come from her manuscripts. However, one written description of her work and popularity from her own era still exists. She is considered by scholars to be the first woman known to write francophone verse.
Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need to rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be complex. It is normally dramatic, with various characters. Narrative poems include all epic poetry, and the various types of "lay", most ballads, and some idylls, as well as many poems not falling into a distinct type.
Amy Judith Levy was an English essayist, poet, and novelist best remembered for her literary gifts; her experience as the second Jewish woman at Cambridge University, and as the first Jewish student at Newnham College, Cambridge; her feminist positions; her friendships with others living what came later to be called a "New Woman" life, some of whom were lesbians; and her relationships with both women and men in literary and politically activist circles in London during the 1880s.
"My Last Duchess" is a poem by Robert Browning, frequently anthologised as an example of the dramatic monologue. It first appeared in 1842 in Browning's Dramatic Lyrics. The poem is composed in 28 rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter.
The Ring and the Book is a long dramatic narrative poem, and, more specifically, a verse novel, of 21,000 lines, written by Robert Browning. It was published in four volumes from 1868 to 1869 by Smith, Elder & Co.
Men and Women is a collection of fifty-one poems in two volumes by Robert Browning, first published in 1855. While now generally considered to contain some of the best of Browning's poetry, at the time it was not received well and sold poorly.
"Andrea del Sarto" is a poem by Robert Browning (1812–1889) published in his 1855 poetry collection, Men and Women. It is a dramatic monologue, a form of poetry for which he is famous, about the Italian painter Andrea del Sarto.
"Ligeia" is an early short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1838. The story follows an unnamed narrator and his wife Ligeia, a beautiful and intelligent raven-haired woman. She falls ill, composes "The Conqueror Worm", and quotes lines attributed to Joseph Glanvill shortly before dying.
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman is the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). The Wrongs of Woman was published posthumously in 1798 by her husband, William Godwin, and is often considered her most radical feminist work.
The Lucy poems are a series of five poems composed by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) between 1798 and 1801. All but one were first published during 1800 in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration between Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that was both Wordsworth's first major publication and a milestone in the early English Romantic movement. In the series, Wordsworth sought to write unaffected English verse infused with abstract ideals of beauty, nature, love, longing, and death.
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, or Turf and Towers (1873) is a poem in blank verse by Robert Browning. It tells a story of sexual intrigue, religious obsession and violent death in contemporary Paris and Normandy, closely based on the true story of the death, supposedly by suicide, of the jewellery heir Antoine Mellerio. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country has never been one of Browning's more popular poems, originally because of the perceived sordidness of the story, and later on grounds thus summarised by the critic C. H. Herford:
The poet followed on the heels of the journalist, and borrowed, it must be owned, not a little of his methods. If any poem of Browning's may be compared to versified special correspondence, it is this. He tells the story, in his own person, in blank verse of admirable ease and fluency, from which every pretence of poetry is usually remote.
Public Library and Other Stories is a short story collection by Scottish author Ali Smith, published in 2015. The fourth story in the collection, "The Beholder", was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award.
Ella Dietz was an American actress and author. Professionally known by her maiden name, Ella Dietz, she was a writer of poems and songs, an instructor in elocution and dramatic art, a reader, and a reciter for charitable events. In the United States, she served as the fifth president of Sorosis, vice-president of the National Council of Women, and was a leading member of the Advisory Board of The Federation of Clubs. To the British public, she was well-known for her histrionic abilities, having acted leading roles in over thirty plays in London during the period of 1874 to 1881. She was also skilled as an artist with pencil and brush.
Lillian Rozell Messenger was an American poet from Kentucky. Among her first acknowledged poems were those brought out in a volume entitled, Threads of fate, 1872. Other volumes included Fragments from an old inn, 1885; The Vision of gold, 1886; and The Southern Cross, 1891. "Columbus" was read by Governor John Wesley Hoyt of Wyoming Territory during the patriotic celebration at the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893. "In the heart of America," was read at the Cotton States and International Exposition, in Atlanta, 1895. Messenger contributed many poems to the Louisville Journal, Memphis papers, and the New York Home Journal. Her most ambitious poems were lengthy, narrative ones, with themes such as "Charlotte Corday" and "Penelope, the Wife of Ulysses". Messenger died in 1921.
Fannie B. Linderman was a British-born American teacher of dramatic arts, an entertainer, and a writer. She was a member of the faculty of Chicago Musical College, Department of Dramatic Art, and for 17 years, served as the school's dean of women. She also conducted a studio where dramatic art and public speaking courses were given. Known as the "Poet of the Commonplace" and described as an artist-teacher and an author-reader, she made a reputation as a reader of her own compositions.
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