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love poetry

 

I have tagged as “love poetry” any poetic expression written by a woman (or in a woman’s voice) to a woman that would be considered love poetry if written between an opposite sex couple.

LHMP entry

Stepping back from the cynical take on “tender friendship” that developed by the end of the 17th century, this chapter looks at an example of the sincere version, via a deep dive into the life and work of English poet Katherine Philips. Half a century before Manley’s New Cabaland in contrast to Behn’s overt eroticism, Philips represents the “polite” culture of female intimacy...or does she?

This is an encyclopedia-style collection of texts that speak to specific topics in the history of sexuality. It is far from exhaustive, either in intent or execution, but rather picks specific works to use as discussion or thinking points. It was compiled for use as a set of study texts for a college course on the history of sexuality and that purpose can be seen in the inclusion of study questions after each text.

This is a publications survey essay, talking about recent (as of 2000) publications on the topic of women in classical antiquity. It starts by noting that a similar survey in 1976 found it possible to survey the entire topic in the form of a half-dozen or so publications, and that the current state of the field is much more satisfactory.

Stigers responds to several topics touched on in Hallett’s consideration of Sappho’s poetic voice and persona with respect to her personal life. It is acknowledged that special care must be taken when considering a poet writing in the first person. The poetic voice may be generalized or fictionalized or it may in fact represent the poet’s own experiences and emotions.

[Note: in this summary, I’m going to be interspersing my own commentary without necessarily calling it out with square brackets, although I may use brackets to set off some comments. The next LHMP entry includes a scholarly response to this article that appeared in the same volume of the journal and shows that some of my questions were also raised at the time.]

Gubar looks at the ways in which poets and writers have used and reinterpreted both the poetry and the image of Sappho across the ages, particularly in the context of sexuality. In the early decades of the 20th century, as translators were shifting to honoring the female pronouns in Sappho’s work and classicists were re-examining the myths of her life, a wide range of women writers focused on Sappho as an inspiration and model for their own work.

The English poet Katherine Philips, writing in the mid-17th century achieved a significant reputation during her own lifetime, one of the earliest English female poets to do so. Despite a bourgeois background, her personal charm and talents brought her entry into court and literary circles. Her reputation would continue into the 18th century before fading into being considered merely sentimental and an example of the préciosité fashion, and of interest only for the male literary circles she intersected.

When one of my summaries is basically a list of contents, either it means that the publication is really thin on relevant content, or it means that it’s so rich that you simply need to buy the book and put it in a cherished place on your shelf. This one is the latter. At least half the contents apply to women’s experiences (although it’s still true that the male-authored female-relevant content far outnumbers the female-authored male-relevant content) and the collection includes many of the oft-cited texts from the covered period. Far from all, but an excellent place to start.

As might be predicted from past experience with general survey works, the amount of material relating to female same-sex relations in this book is low. And like most surveys that cover all of history up to the present day (1969 counts as “the present day” for practical purposes), more than half the page count covers the 20th century. Out of 120 entries, I counted 14 that were in any way relevant to the LHMP (and that includes anything ambiguous between lesbians and trans men).

This is an anthology of literature, rather than an analytic text. The organizing principle for selection is examples of love between men or between women who are not biologically related. Literary texts often don’t overtly show the truth of relationships or how those participating in the relationship understood themselves, but they can show how such relationships were represented and expressed.

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