'Said to be a writer' : tradition, gender and identity in the poetry of Charlotte Mew.
Abstract
This thesis studies the poetry of Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) and explores how this
still relatively obscure poet, writing at the turn of the last century, has a key role in any
discussion of poetic tradition and ideas of gender and female identity as these are
configured in the early twentieth century. This thesis examines why Mew's work has
been condemned to obscurity in spite of her comparative success during her own
lifetime and goes on to suggest that the very reasons for her rejection from the literary
canon - the critical approbation of her peers, biography and the problem of placement
in literary culture - are the methods of exploring her true contribution to it. Chapters
two to five study Mew's work from four different but related critical standpoints: the
figure of the fallen woman, the Victorian women's poetic tradition, Modernism and
impersonality and female Modernisms and ideas of the feminine sublime. One of the
major problems in establishing Mew's work in the critical culture has been the
difficulty in placing her as either a Victorian or a Modernist. This thesis studies her
writing in both critical contexts suggesting that Mew's work challenges the absolute
categories of the literary canon. The chapters are divided into a study of the critical
arguments surrounding ideas of tradition and gender followed by a detailed textual
study of her poems. Her poetry is compared to that of writers as diverse as D.G .
Rossetti, Augusta Webster, Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, T. S. Eliot and H. D.
Through a constant balancing of Mew's individual voice and her place in the literary
culture, I suggest that her work is integral to an understanding of literary tradition and
that her work is central to discussions of gender poetics and female subjectivity in the
twentieth century.
Authors
Hussain, SarahCollections
- Theses [4490]