Poetry Archives

Transgressing gender and genre: Isabella Whitney’s appropriation of London

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Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier discusses Isabella Whitney’s poetry that appropriates the city of London to transgress both poetry and politics.

The poet Isabella Whitney is considered the first professional female writer in England to have had secular poetry published under her own name. Dr Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier, professor of English literature at Hildesheim University, Germany, explores how Whitney presents herself as a respectable female poet in a male-dominated era by ‘appropriating’ the city of London, irrevocably weaving herself into its history […]

The legacy and long afterlife of Old English poetry

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The Germanic people who inhabited England before William the Conqueror became ruler in 1066 spoke a language known as Old English. Steeped in the art of storytelling, theirs was essentially an oral culture and few tales were committed to manuscripts that have survived. Those that do are testament to the rich legacy of its verse. The legacy and long afterlife […]