Cover image for
Title:
The literature of lesbianism : a historical anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall / edited by Terry Castle.
Author:
Castle, Terry.
Publication Information:
New York : Columbia University Press, ©2003.
Call Number:
PN6071.L47 L58 2003
Abstract:
"Since the Renaissance, countless writers have been magnetized by the notion of love between women. From Renaissance love poems to twentieth-century novels, plays, and short stories, The Literature of Lesbianism brings together hundreds of literary works on the subject of female homosexuality. This is not an anthology of "lesbian writers." Nor is it simply a one-sided compendium of "positive" or "negative" images of lesbian experience. Terry Castle explores the emergence and transformation of the "idea of lesbianism": its conceptual origins and how it has been transmitted, transformed, and collectively embellished over the past five centuries." "Both male and female authors are represented here and they display an astonishing and often unpredictable range of attitudes. Some excoriate female same-sex love; some eulogize it. Some are salacious or satiric, others sympathetic and confessional. Yet what comes across everywhere is just how visible - as a literary theme - Sapphic love has always been in Western literature. As Castle demonstrates, it is hardly the taboo or forbidden topic we sometimes assume it to be, but has in fact been a central preoccupation for many of our greatest writers, past and present." "Beginning with an excerpt from Ariosto's comic epic poem, Orlando Furioso, the anthology progresses chronologically through the next five centuries, presenting selections from Shakespeare, John Donne, Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Alexander Pope, the Marquis de Sade, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Guy de Maupassant, Henry James, Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, Colette, and Graham Greene, among many others. It also includes some anonymous works - several published here for the first time - as well as numerous translations from the writers of antiquity, such as Sappho, Ovid, Martial, and Juvenal, whose rediscovery in the early Renaissance helped shape subsequent Western literary representations of female homosexuality."--Jacket.
ISBN:
9780231125109
Physical Description:
xxi, 1110 pages ; 27 cm
Contents:
The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries The Eighteenth Century The Nineteenth Century The Twentieth Century

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries -- from Orlando Furioso / Ludovico Ariosto -- "Elegy for a Lady Fallen for Another Lady" / Pontus De Tyard -- "Memorable Stories About Women Who Have Degenerated into Men" / Ambroise Paré -- from The Journal of Montaigne's Travels in Italy by Way of Switzerland and Germany / Michel De Montaigne -- "Poems XLIX" from The Maitland Quarto Manuscript / Anonymous -- from The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia / Sir Philip Sidney -- from Gallathea / John Lyly -- from As You Like It / William Shakespeare -- from Twelfth Night / William Shakespeare -- The Book of Ruth / The King James Bible -- "On a Lady Named Beloved" / Anne De Rohan -- from Hic Mulier: or, The Man-Woman / Anonymous -- from Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished / George Sandys -- "Sapho to Philaenis" / John Donne -- "To Mr. J.D." / "T. W." -- "Epigram on the Court Pucelle" / Ben Jonson -- "On the Friendship Betwixt Two Ladies" / Edmund Waller -- "Tribades, or Lesbia" / Francois De Maynard -- from Upon Appleton House / Andrew Marvell -- "Two Beauties, Tender Lovers" / Denis Sanguin De Saint-Pavin -- from Dialogues on the Arcana of Love and Venus by Luisa Sigea Toletana / Nicolas Chorier -- from The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith, Commonly Called Moll Cutpurse / Anonymous -- "To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship" / Katherine Philips -- "Parting with Lucasia: A Song" / Katherine Philips -- "Orinda to Lucasia" / Katherine Philips -- "Friendship's Mystery: To My Dearest Lucasia" / Katherine Philips -- "Injuria Amici" / Katherine Philips -- from Lives of Gallant Ladies (1665-1666) / Pierre De Bourdeilles, Seigneur De Brantôme -- "To the Fair Clorinda, Who Made Love to Me" / Aphra Behn -- "Verses Design'd by Mrs. A. Behn to be sent to a Fair Lady, that Desir'd She Would Absent Herself to Cure her Love" / Aphra Behn -- "Accompanying a Ring Bearing the Portrait of la Señora Condesa de Paredes. She Explains" / Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz -- "Inés, Dear, with your Love I am Enraptured" / Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz -- "On a Picture Painted by Herself, Representing Two Nymphs of Diana's One in a Posture to Hunt, the Other Bathing" / Anne Killigrew -- "On the Soft and Gentle Motions of Eudora" / Anne Killigrew -- from The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis / John Dryden -- "Love and Friendship: A Pastoral" / Elizabeth Singer Rowe -- "Venus's Reply" from A Collection of the Most Choice and Private Poems, Lampoons, &c. / Anonymous.

The Eighteenth Century -- "The Ladies of the New Cabal" from The New Atalantis / [Mary] Delarivier Manley -- Spectator No. 223 / Joseph Addison -- Translation of Sappho Fragment 31 ("Blest as th'Immortal Gods is He") / Ambrose Philips -- "Sappho to Phaon" / Alexander Pope -- "Friendship between Ephelia and Ardelia" / Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea -- from Memoirs of the Life of Count Grammont / Anthony Hamilton -- "Madrigal" / Pauline De Simiane -- "Letter to Madame la Marquise de S[----], On Sending her Tobacco" / Pauline De Simiane -- from the Embassy Letters / Mary Wortley Montagu -- "Cloe to Artimesa" / Anonymous -- Monsieur Thing's Origin: or Seignor D----o's Adventures in Britain / Anonymous -- from A Supplement to the Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution / Anonymous -- "The Female Cabin Boy" / Anonymous -- Translation of Sappho Fragment no. 31 ("Happy as a God is He") / John Addison -- No. 130 ("Dire Love, Sweet-Bitter Bird of Prey!") / John Addison -- from The Sappho-An. An Heroic Poem of Thee Cantos, in the Ovidian Style, Describing the Pleasures which the Fair Sex Enjoy with Each Other / Anonymous -- from Pamela / Samuel Richardson -- from Sir Charles Grandison / Samuel Richardson -- The Female Husband / Henry Fielding -- from Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure / John Cleland -- "The Game of Flatts" from Satan's Harvest Home / Anonymous -- from The Indiscreet Jewels / Denis Diderot -- from The Nun / Denis Diderot -- from A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke / Charlotte Charke -- from Anecdotes of a Convent / Anonymous -- from "Dialogue between Sappho and Ninon de l'Enclos, in the Shades" / Anonymous -- from The Adulteress / Anonymous -- from A History of My Life / Giacomo Casanova -- from Juliette / Marquis De Sade -- From the journals of Eleanor Butler / "The Ladies of Llangollen" [Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby] -- "Elegy Written at the Sea-side, and Addressed to Miss Honora Sneyd" / Anna Seward -- from Llangollen Vale, Inscribed to the Right Honourable Lady Eleanor Butler, and Miss Ponsonby / Anna Seward -- "In a Letter to A.R.C., On Her Wishing to be Called Anna" / Mary Matilda Betham -- "Invitation: to J.B.C." / Mary Matilda Betham -- "A Valentine" / Mary Matilda Betham.

The Nineteenth Century -- from Belinda / Maria Edgeworth -- Christabel / Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- from Christabess: A Right Woeful Poem / "S. T. Colebritche, Esq." -- from The Diaries of Anne Lister / Anne Lister -- "To the Lady E.B. and the Hon. Miss P., Composed in the Grounds of Plas Newydd, Near Llangollen, 1824" / William Wordsworth -- from Mademoiselle de Maupin / Théophile Gautier -- from The Girl With the Golden Eyes / Honoré de Balzac -- "A Young Girl Seen in Church" / Eliza Mary Hamilton -- "To George Sand: A Desire" / Elizabeth Barrett Browning -- from Villette / Charlotte Brontë -- "Lesbos" / Charles Baudelaire -- "Damned Women 1 (Delphine and Hippolyta)" / Charles Baudelaire -- "Damned Women 2" / Charles Baudelaire -- Goblin Market / Christina Rossetti -- "Anactoria" / Algernon Charles Swinburne -- from Lesbia Brandon / Algernon Charles Swinburne -- Scenes of Saphic Love / Paul Verlaine -- "Her Breast is Fit for Pearls" / Emily Dickinson -- "Her Sweet Weight on my Heart a Night" / Emily Dickinson -- "Going, to, Her!" / Emily Dickinson -- "Ourselves were wed one summer, dear" / Emily Dickinson -- "Precious to Me, She still shall be" / Emily Dickinson -- "The Stars are old, that stood for me" / Emily Dickinson -- "Frigid and sweer Her Parting Face" / Emily Dickinson -- "To see her is a Picture" / Emily Dickinson -- translation of Martial's Epigram VII.67 ("Abhorrent of All Natural Joys") from The Index Expurgatorius of Martial, Literally Translated / George Augustus Sala -- from Desperate Remedies / Thomas Hardy -- "Since I Died" / Elizabeth Stuart Phelps -- "Felipa" / Constance Fenimore Woolson -- from Nana / Émile Zola -- "Paul's Mistress" / Guy De Maupassant -- from My Secret Life / "Walter" -- "Sinfonia Eroica (To Sylvia)" / Amy Levy -- "To Lallie" / Amy Levy -- "Borderland" / Amy Levy -- "At a Dinner Party" / Amy Levy -- from Lila and Colette / Catulle Mendès -- from The Bostonians / Henry James -- "Erinna, Thou Art Ever Fair" / "Michael Field" [Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper] -- "Atthis, My Darling" / "Michael Field" [Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper] -- "Maids, Not to You" / "Michael Field" [Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper] -- "Power in Silence" / "Michael Field" [Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper] -- "Daybreak" / "Michael Field" [Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper] -- "My Lady Has a Lovely Rite" / "Michael Field" [Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper] -- from The Songs of Bilitis / Pierre Louÿs -- from A Madman's Manifesto / August Strindberg -- "Before Dark" / Marcel Proust -- from Cities of the Plain / Marcel Proust -- "Tommy, the Unsentimental" / Willa Cather -- "The Lesbian Hell" / Aleister Crowley.

The Twentieth Century -- "Crucifixion" / "Marie Madeleine" [Marie Madeleine von Puttkamer] -- "Beneath the Surface" / "Marie Madeleine" [Marie Madeleine von Puttkamer] -- "The Unfading" / "Marie Madeleine" [Marie Madeleine von Puttkamer] -- "Vagabonds" / "Marie Madeleine" [Marie Madeleine von Puttkamer] -- "Woman" / Natalie Clifford Barney -- "Couplets" / Natalie Clifford Barney -- "Sappho Lives Again" / Renée Vivien -- "Words to my Friend" / Renée Vivien -- "Kashmiri Song" / "Laurence Hope" [Adela Florence Nicolson] -- "From Behind The Lattice" / "Laurence Hope" [Adela Florence Nicolson] -- "Rosabel" / Angelina Weld Grimké -- "Brown Girl" / Angelina Weld Grimké -- from Pandora's Box / Frank Wedekind -- "If You Come" / Lucie Delarue-Mardrus -- "Leves Amores" / Katherine Mansfield -- "Friendship" / Katherine Mansfield -- "The Spirit of Thy Singing" / Radclyffe Hall -- "Oh! That Thy Lips Were Goblet of Crystal" / Radclyffe Hall -- "Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself" / Radcyffe Hall -- "Hora Stellatrix" / Amy Lowell -- "Stupidity" / Amy Lowell -- "Anticipation" / Amy Lowell -- "Vintage" / Amy Lowell -- "Aubade" / Amy Lowell -- "In a Garden" / Amy Lowell -- "The Weather-Cock Points South" / Amy Lowell -- "The Amazon on the Fountain" / "Vernon Lee" [Violet Paget] -- "Are You Happy?" / Marina Tsvetaeva -- "Beneath My Plush Wool Plaid's Caresses" / Marina Tsvetaeva -- "Tonight, Between Seven and Eight" / Marina Tsvetaeva -- "How Can I Not Remember" from "The Girlfriend Poems" / Marina Tsvetaeva -- Letter to the Amazon / Marina Tsvetaeva -- "In Words, in Their Cold Interlacing" / Sophia Parnok -- "At Times Our Premonitions" / Sophia Parnok -- "Blindly Staring Eyes" / Sophia Parnok -- "You Sleep, My Companion-Lover" / Sophia Parnok -- "You Came In" / Sophia Parnok -- "I, Like a Blind Woman" / Sophia Parnok -- from Lifting Belly / Gertrude Stein -- "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" / Gertrude Stein-- "As a Wife has a Cow: A Love Story" from A Book Concluding with As a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story / Gertrude Stein -- from The Rainbow / D.H. Lawrence --"À Quoi Bon Dire" / Charlotte Mew -- "On the Road to the Sea" / Charlotte Mew -- "The Road to Kérity" / Charlotte Mew -- "My Heart Is Lame" / Charlotte Mew -- from Regiment of Women / "Clemence Dane" [Winifred Ashton] -- "The Fire" / Helen Rose Hull -- from Despised and Rejected / "A. T. Fitzroy" [Rose Allatini] -- "I Can't Feel the Sunshine" / Lesbia Harford -- "You Want a Lily" / Lesbia Harford -- Letters to Vita Sackville-West / Violet Trefusis -- from My Blue Notebooks / Liane De Pougy -- From an unpublished memoir / Vita Sackville-West -- "Self-Epitaph, Composed by an Honest Sensualist" / Vita Sackville-West -- "She Brought with Careless Hand" / Vita Sackville-West -- "Tess" / Vita Sackville-West -- "A Dream of Sappho" / Rose O' Neill -- "Death Shall Not Ease Me of You" / Rose O' Neill -- "Mea Culpa" / Rose O' Neill -- "But If You Come to Me by Day" / Rose O' Neill -- from The Flower Beneath the Foot / Ronald Firbank -- "Fragment Thirty-Six" from Heliodora / H.D. [Hilda Doolittle] -- From HERmione / H.D. [Hilda Doolittle] -- from Mrs. Dalloway / Virginia Woolf -- from Orlando / Virginia Woolf -- from The Tortoise-Shell Cat / Naomi Royde-Smith -- "The Pash" / Thomas Burke -- from The Captive / Édouard Bourdet -- from Dusty Answer / Rosamond Lehmann -- from Extraordinary Women / Compton Mackenzie -- The Sink of Solitude / Anonymous -- "Cassation" / Djuna Barnes -- "The Jungle" / Elizabeth Bowen -- "Prove It on Me Blues" (Lesbian Blues Lyrics of the 1920s) -- "B. D. Woman Blues"(Lesbian Blues Lyrics of the 1920s) -- "Has Anybody Seen My Corinne"(Lesbian Blues Lyrics of the 1920s) -- from Passing / Nella Larsen -- from Strange Brother / Blair Niles -- from My Thirty Years' War / Margaret Anderson -- "Lesbian-Ape" from The Apes of God / Wyndham Lewis -- from The Pure and the Impure / Colette -- from Spangled Unicorn / Noël Coward -- "The Knife of the Times" / William Carlos Williams -- "Since the First Toss of Gale that Blew" / Sylvia Townsend Warner -- "Out of Your Left Eye" / Sylvia Townsend Warner -- "I Would Give You Alexander's Bucephalus" / Sylvia Townsend Warner -- "Loved with an L ..." / Sylvia Townsend Warner -- "Drawing You, Heavy with Sleep" / Sylvia Townsend Warner -- "The Sea Change" / Ernest Hemingway -- from Intimate Memories / Mabel Dodge Luhan -- "The Bathe" / "Henry Handel Richardson" [Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson] -- "Two Hanged Women" / "Henry Handel Richardson" [Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson] -- from Devoted Ladies / "M. J. Farrell" [Molly Keane] -- "Sappho or Suicide" / Marguerite Yourcenar -- from Of Lena Geyer / Marcia Davenport -- "Breeze Anstey" / H.E. Bates -- from Diana: A Strange Autobiography / "Diana Frederics" -- "It Is Marvelous to Wake Up Together" / Elizabeth Bishop -- from Two Serious Ladies / Jane Bowles -- "Going to Massachusetts" / Jane Bowles -- from The Friendly Young Ladies / Mary Renault -- from For Sylvia / Valentine Ackland -- from Olivia / Dorothy Strachey -- "Women Are Like Geography" / Gertrude Lawrence -- from The Price of Salt / "Claire Morgan" [Patricia Highsmith] -- from La Bâtarde / Violette Leduc -- "Chagrin in Three Parts" / Graham Greene -- "Zeitl and Rickel" / Isaac Bashevis Singer -- "Memory Is All: Alice B. Toklas" / Janet Flanner.
Added Author:
Copies: