Elizabeth Bishop is not a writer often read in conjunction with classical texts. This article argues, however, that her unpublished college translation of Aristophanes’s Birds constitutes an important step in her poetic development. Through an analysis of her translation, this article demonstrates that Bishop was an attentive and astute reader of Greek whose eye was particularly drawn to how the parabasis of Birds contrasts the steadfastness of birds with human ephemerality. Written at a formative moment, the translation interweaves the image of a bird as a point of constancy into Bishop’s own poetic fabric, and poems from the thirties display clear Aristophanic echoes. Furthermore, Bishop engages with the more political elements of Birds—namely, Aristophanes’s connection of bird metamorphosis with domination, dramatized by the play’s tropes of gendered violence, imperialistic ambition, and presumptive human supremacy over the animal. By giving birds language, Aristophanes poses the potential of avian sociality and resists reducing birds to one-dimensional allegory. This article argues that these aspects of Birds resonate too, albeit latently, in Bishop’s own poetry, both early and late. Through drawing out linguistic associations and thematic connections to Aristophanes’s play from across Bishop’s work, connections often catalyzed by the presence of a bird, a sustained relationship with the classics becomes visible.
{"title":"“I Tried to Answer from the Birds, in Ancient Augury Fashion”: Aristophanes’s Birds and the Work of Elizabeth Bishop","authors":"Constance Everett-Pite","doi":"10.1086/724023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/724023","url":null,"abstract":"Elizabeth Bishop is not a writer often read in conjunction with classical texts. This article argues, however, that her unpublished college translation of Aristophanes’s Birds constitutes an important step in her poetic development. Through an analysis of her translation, this article demonstrates that Bishop was an attentive and astute reader of Greek whose eye was particularly drawn to how the parabasis of Birds contrasts the steadfastness of birds with human ephemerality. Written at a formative moment, the translation interweaves the image of a bird as a point of constancy into Bishop’s own poetic fabric, and poems from the thirties display clear Aristophanic echoes. Furthermore, Bishop engages with the more political elements of Birds—namely, Aristophanes’s connection of bird metamorphosis with domination, dramatized by the play’s tropes of gendered violence, imperialistic ambition, and presumptive human supremacy over the animal. By giving birds language, Aristophanes poses the potential of avian sociality and resists reducing birds to one-dimensional allegory. This article argues that these aspects of Birds resonate too, albeit latently, in Bishop’s own poetry, both early and late. Through drawing out linguistic associations and thematic connections to Aristophanes’s play from across Bishop’s work, connections often catalyzed by the presence of a bird, a sustained relationship with the classics becomes visible.","PeriodicalId":45201,"journal":{"name":"MODERN PHILOLOGY","volume":"120 1","pages":"523 - 547"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47481668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Robert Frost’s oeuvre the poetry book or volume is an important unit or scale for the composition, reception, and interpretation of poetry, but its formal parameters and generic conventions have been understudied. Focusing on the arrangement of poems within Frost’s first five books, and then their eventual derangement in his first Collected Poems, I examine Frost’s conflicting convictions on the question of the independence of each individual poem versus the coherence of several in an integrated collection.
{"title":"Robert Frost: Poems in Books, Poems against Books","authors":"Armen Davoudian","doi":"10.1086/724587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/724587","url":null,"abstract":"In Robert Frost’s oeuvre the poetry book or volume is an important unit or scale for the composition, reception, and interpretation of poetry, but its formal parameters and generic conventions have been understudied. Focusing on the arrangement of poems within Frost’s first five books, and then their eventual derangement in his first Collected Poems, I examine Frost’s conflicting convictions on the question of the independence of each individual poem versus the coherence of several in an integrated collection.","PeriodicalId":45201,"journal":{"name":"MODERN PHILOLOGY","volume":"120 1","pages":"497 - 522"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49105926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":":Poet of the Medieval Modern: Reading the Early Medieval Library with David Jones","authors":"","doi":"10.1086/725141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/725141","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45201,"journal":{"name":"MODERN PHILOLOGY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48033321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":":Bibliophobia: The End and the Beginning of the Book","authors":"M. Lyons","doi":"10.1086/724889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/724889","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45201,"journal":{"name":"MODERN PHILOLOGY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47112117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":":Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature","authors":"Michal Zechariah","doi":"10.1086/724655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/724655","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45201,"journal":{"name":"MODERN PHILOLOGY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49492606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":":Narrating Trauma: Victorian Novels and Modern Stress Disorders","authors":"Taten C. Shirley","doi":"10.1086/724815","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/724815","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45201,"journal":{"name":"MODERN PHILOLOGY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49035477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":":Neither the Time nor the Place: The New Nineteenth-Century American Studies","authors":"M. Collins","doi":"10.1086/724778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/724778","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45201,"journal":{"name":"MODERN PHILOLOGY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44260517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":":The Pursuit of Style in Early Modern Drama: Forms of Talk on the London Stage","authors":"L. Hopkins","doi":"10.1086/724734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/724734","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45201,"journal":{"name":"MODERN PHILOLOGY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44430332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：