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Sexual Polarities in The Defence of Guenevere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Florence S. Boos
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Extract

William Morris's early poetry is striking for its erotic intensity and powerful evocations of passionate and unhappy women. Indeed, his portrayals of confined, alienated, and dependent women are so sharp that they pose some obvious questions. Do they, in the end, simply stylize and project some of the most destructive conventions of Victorian patriarchy? Or do they actually provide some “defence” of female passion and sexuality, against the social hierarchies and emotional suffocation they depict?

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 13 , Spring 1985 , pp. 181 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

Notes

1. See, for example, Perrine, Laurence, “Morris's Guenevere: An In-terpretation,” Philological Quarterly, 39 (04 1960), 234–41; Angela Carson's “Morris's Guenevere: A Further Note,” Philological Quarterly, 42 (01 1963), 131–34; and Silver, Carole G., “‘The Defence of Guenevere’: A Further Interpretation,” Studies in English Literature, 9 (Autumn 1969), 695–702.Google Scholar

2. Berry, Ralph, “A Defence of Guenevere,” Victorian Poetry 9 (Autumn 1971), 278.Google Scholar

3. Passages from The Defence of Guenevere are cited from The Collected Works of William Morris, edited Morris, May, London: Longmans, 1910, volume 1.Google Scholar

4. Mackail, J.W., The Life of William Morris, 1899; rpt. New York/London: Benjamin Bloom, 1968, 1, p. 45.Google Scholar

5. 5. See Stallman, Robert L., “‘Rapun-zel’ Unravelled,” Victorian Poetry, 7 (Autumn 1969), 221–32, and Sadoff, Dianne F., “Imaginative Transformation in William Morris's ‘Rapunzel’,” Victorian Poetry, 12 (Summer 1974), 153–64.Google Scholar

6. Mackail, , 1, p. 137.Google Scholar

7. British Library Add. MS. 45,350, F. 40.Google Scholar