Pearls, Diamonds and Coins: Fashioning the Beloved's Body in Carol Ann Duffy's Poetry

Authors

  • Julieta Flores Jurado Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1344/Lectora2020.26.3

Keywords:

Carol Ann Duffy, love poetry, fashion, body, blazon.

Abstract

Carol Ann Duffy inherits and reworks many of the codes and conventions of canonical love poetry; from her position as an acclaimed contemporary poet interested in giving voice to marginal and dissident subjects and transforming poetry from within, she has explored the connection between the adornment of women's bodies and the politics of looking. This article proposes to interpret pearls, gems, jewellery and gold in three poems from different stages of Duffy's career as part of a work of revision and critique of canonical love poetry. Drawing from feminist research on the love sonnet, Petrarchism, and the blazon, I discuss how Duffy portrays ornaments, and fashion more broadly, as "a liberating and repressing part of our lives" (2004: xi).

References

Baker, Moira P. (1991), "'The Uncanny Stranger on Display': The Female Body in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Love Poetry", South Atlantic Review, 56 (2): 7-25.

Bordo, Susan (2003), Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Berkeley & Los Angeles, University of California Press.

Donne, John (2004), "To His Mistress Going to Bed", Out of Fashion: An Anthology of Poems, Carol Ann Duffy (ed.), London, Faber and Faber: 158-159.

Dowson, Jane (2016), Carol Ann Duffy: Poet for Our Times, London, Palgrave Macmillan.

Duffy, Carol Ann (ed.) (2004), Out of Fashion: An Anthology of Poems, London, Faber and Faber.

—(2015), Collected Poems, London, Picador.

Entwistle, Joanne (2015), The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, Cambridge, Polity Press.

Galvez, Marisa (2012), "Alba", The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Roland Greene and Stephen Cushman (eds.), Princeton, Princeton UP: 29-30.

Gill, Jo (2007), Women's Poetry, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.


Gray, Erik (2018), The Art of Love Poetry, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Henderson, Diana E. (2011), "The Sonnet, Subjectivity and Gender", The Cambridge Companion to the Sonnet, A. D. Cousins and Peter Howarth (eds.), Cambridge, Cambridge UP: 46-65.

Hillman, David and Ulrika Maude (2015), "Introduction", The Cambridge Companion to the Body in Literature, David Hillman and Ulrika Maude (eds.), Cambridge, Cambridge UP: 1-9.

Hirsch, Edward (2014), A Poet's Glossary, Boston & New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Johnson, Christopher D. (2012), "Conceit", The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Roland Greene and Stephan Cushman (eds.), Princeton, Princeton UP: 289-291.

Moore, Mary B. (2000), Desiring Voices: Women Sonneteers and Petrarchism, Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois UP.

Mulvey, Laura (1975), "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema", Screen, 16 (3): 6-18.

Rees-Jones, Deryn (2010), Carol Ann Duffy, Tavistock, Northcote House Publishers.

Russell, Rebecca Ross (2010), Gender and Jewelry: A Feminist Analysis, CreateSpace, Independent Publishing Platform.

Shakespeare, William (2010), Shakespeare's Sonnets, Katherine Duncan-Jones (ed.), London, Arden Shakespeare/Methuen Drama.

Suleiman, Susan Rubin (1985), "Editor's Introduction", Poetics Today, 6 (1/2): 5-8.

Tu, Thuy Linh (2014), "Fashion", Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler (eds.), New York & London, New York UP: 104-106.

Vickers, Nancy J. (1981), "Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme", Critical Inquiry, 8 (2): 265-279.

—(1985), "This Heraldry in Lucrece' Face", Poetics Today, 6 (1/2): 171-184.

Wills, Clair (2000), "Marking Time: Fanny Howe's Poetics of Transcendence", Contemporary Women’s Poetry: Reading/Writing/Practice, Alison Mark and Deryn Rees-Jones (eds.), Basingstoke, Macmillan: 119-139.

Winterson, Jeanette (2009), "Can You Move Diagonally? Jeanette Winterson Interviews Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy", JeanetteWinterson.com, 13/11/2019. <http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/journalism/can-you-move-diagonally- jeanette-winterson-interviews-poet-laureate-carol-ann-duffy/>

Downloads

Published

2020-10-28

How to Cite

[1]
Flores Jurado, J. 2020. Pearls, Diamonds and Coins: Fashioning the Beloved’s Body in Carol Ann Duffy’s Poetry. Lectora: Journal of Women and Textuality. 26 (Oct. 2020), 33–48. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1344/Lectora2020.26.3.