İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Bölümü

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British national identity, topicality and tradition in the poetry of Simon Armitage
(Çankaya Üniversitesi, 2008) Coussens, Catherine; 02.01. İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı; 02. Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi; 01. Çankaya Üniversitesi
This paper explores the treatment of British national identity, topicality and tradition in the work of Simon Armitage, alongside broader issues concerning contemporary public poetry in Britain. Armitage, with Carol Ann Duffy, is a major candidate for the position of Poet Laureate in 2009. Both poets have explored constructions of national identity in their work, but it is Armitage who has located himself more assertively within the arena of public, national poetry. Despite his focus on modern life-styles and discourses, and deployment of the mass media to disseminate his poetry into non-literary public spaces, Armitage is particularly sensitive to literary and cultural tradition. Within his work, which is deliberately accessible and contemporary, tradition is always at play in terms of allusion, response and interrogation. In this sense, his poetry both occupies and challenges notions of canonicity and traditional conceptions of British national identity. His recent focus on the theme of conflict also works to expose the inadequacy of mainstream assertions of continuity and meaning when constructing national identity. Armitage places Britishness and British literature within a broader ‘Millennial’ schema of eclipse, destruction and regeneration. For Armitage the recurrence of the theme of conflict throughout literary history both connects the literature of the present day with that of the past and emphasises the future’s instability and eternal lack of resolution. Therefore, Armitage’s modern translations of canonical texts like the Odyssey and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight foreground the fact that disharmony and conflict are, and have always been, national preoccupations
“Under our Cedar’s shadow”: royalist women poets and the English restoration
(Çankaya Üniversitesi, 2007) Coussens, Catherine; 02.01. İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı; 02. Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi; 01. Çankaya Üniversitesi
This paper compares the work of three lesser-known royalist women poets (Rachel Jevon, Ann Lee, and the anonymous female author of The Sacred Historie) to explore the subtle ways in which these writers connect their personal literary projects to the specific requirements of the Restoration regime. Despite the strategic emphasis on masculine authority within the numerous panegyrics addressed to the king in the aftermath of the Restoration in 1660, an alternative impulse in female-authored texts configures the return of the monarchy as an event which women are especially qualified to celebrate. In elevating conventionally feminine values, these poets were able to associate themselves with the social and political agenda of the Restoration government, which aimed to reconcile the English people to their past, and ease tensions associated with the Restoration Settlement, the General Pardon, and the Act of Oblivion. Since the civil wars had created distrust and resentment concerning politics and polemic, women poets could exploit their position as literary and political “outsiders” to justify their rehearsal of the role of “public” poet. However, in promoting their own specific interests, as loyalists whose families had suffered for the Crown, women poets also assert their own hopes for the future path of the monarchy, reminding the king of the significance of his traditional supporters, and emphasising his duty to subordinate himself to God and the English Church
Updating the restoration Libertine in Tanika Gupta’s contemporary adaptation of William Wycherley’s the country wife
(Çankaya Üniversitesi, 2009) Coussens, Catherine; 02.01. İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı; 02. Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi; 01. Çankaya Üniversitesi
This paper analyses Tanika Gupta’s contemporary version of William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy, The Country Wife, particularly in terms of its treatment of the libertine character central to the genre described as ‘sex’ or ‘marriage’ comedy, popular during the 1660s and 1670s (Rosenthal 7-8). By resituating the play in contemporary multicultural London, Gupta enables a critique of contemporary gender and marital mores amongst young, ethnically-hybrid communities to emerge, problematising patriarchal, misogynist or aggressive versions of masculine identity, and asserting the right of individual men and women to choose their own marriage partners. However, she also gives place to the libertine ethos as it was valorised in early modern sex comedies. Critical debate concerning the social and moral implications of the libertine have remained active since the seventeenth century, with the libertine character generally interpreted as either a refreshing freedom-seeker or an anxious misogynist. While Wycherley’s play celebrates but finally limits and condemns the efforts of the libertine to disrupt patriarchal social structures, returning the rebellious upperclass ladies to patriarchal authority, and condemning Horner to future (teputedly impotent) oblivion, Gupta’s female libertines, Dolly and Daisy, remain fun-loving outsiders ready to embark on new adventures, while Hardeep/Horner succeeds in assisting the “country wife” to escape an unhappy marriage. Gupta’s version of the play draws parallels between Restoration social debate – particularly concerning morality, marriage, patriarchy and class – and the ethnically charged debates concerning cultural identity, marriage and gender rights which dominate twenty-first century urban Britain.
“Virtue’s commonwealth”: gendering the royalist cultural rebellion in the English interregnum (1649-1660)
(Çankaya Üniversitesi, 2006) Coussens, Catherine; 02.01. İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı; 02. Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi; 01. Çankaya Üniversitesi
Historians and literary critics have acknowledged the ways in which royalism during the English civil war period came to be associated with the “feminisation” of Stuart court culture, and of the king’s cause as a whole. However, they have failed to attend adequately to the deliberate focus on women and female cultural authority within the literature associated with the “royalist cultural rebellion” (the movement that sought to preserve and recall the ethos and identity of the banished Stuart court). While male poets adopted a self-mocking tone when advertising their artistic dependence on female patrons, alluding self-consciously to their own “feminised” retirement, women’s active role in commissioning, preserving, disseminating and composing royalist literature suggests that their cultural importance was enhanced by the conditions of the Interregnum. Both royalist and parliamentarian propagandists exploited anti-feminist satire to condemn what they saw as illegitimate forms of government. However, royalist traditionalists overtly connected elite royalist women with the ethos and situation of the eclipsed Stuart monarchy, and sought to address a burgeoning female readership by stressing women’s advantages under the Crown. Royalist women in turn responded to these cultural constructions of royalism and femininity, creating powerful authorial identities that would remain potent after the Restoration in 1660

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