Abandoned women and poetic tradition

Abstract

At the heart of poetic tradition is a figure of abandonment, a woman forsaken and out of control. She appears in writings ancient and modern, in the East and the West, in high art and popular culture produced by women and by men. What accounts her perennial fascination? What is her function-in poems and for writers? Lawrence Lipking suggests many possibilities. In this figure he finds a partial record of women's experience, an instrument the expression of religious love and yearning, a voice psychological fears, and, finally, a model the poet. Abandoned women inspire new ways of reading poems and poetic tradition.

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