Carol Ann Duffy's Feminism And Dramatic Monologue
Duffy’s Feminism and Dramatic Monologues: A Study of Some Poems from The World’s Wife. Yasser K. R. Aman, Minia University, Egypt.
Abstract This research aims at investigating Carol Ann Duffy’s representation of feminist issues by recalling historical, religious and mythological figures using the dramatic monologue. Duffy subverts feminine archetypes through a series of dramatic monologues in her volume The World’s Wife whose structure is based on an eclectic mixture of influences that build up intertextual and metatextual webs reflected in themes of love, as well as the loss of love, sexist oppression, sadness and loneliness, and many others. Be it noted that The World’s Wife shows difficulties, set by a patriarchal society, in the way of women as well as men. Duffy’s simple language is traced back to Wordsworth, while her use of the dramatic monologue reminiscent of Browning and T. S. Eliot. To express female desiderata, Duffy has revisited
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Midas that holds intertextual semantic relations based on world text theory with Ovid’s king Midas’ story from Metamorphoses, and Delilah and Salome. Other gender-bending figures, illustrated not by cross-dressing but by cross identification, appear like Mrs. Darwin, Mrs. Aesop, Mrs. Sisyphus, and Mrs. Faust.
Keywords: Feminism, dramatic monologue, Duffy, poetry.
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