퍼디타를 벗어나 사포 되기: 메어리 로빈슨의 “정통적 소네트” 연구 (From Perdita to Sappho: A Study of Mary Robinson’s “Legitimate Sonnets”)

서지정보

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· 저자명 : 조희정

초록

This essay aims at understanding Mary Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon as a text that embodies the author’s struggle to reinvent herself as a female poet. As Robinson’s theatrical career preceded the period of her poetic production and her affair with the Prince of Wales was widely scandalized, the public called her “Perdita,” the nickname that connoted sexuality and theatricality. In this situation, Robinson attempted to discover her poetic voice by resorting to the figure of “Sappho,” the ancient muse that she yearned to equate with herself to an extent.
In search of her poetic identity, Robinson deploys the form of “legitimate sonnets,” which was supposed to be difficult to create due to the complex syllabic structure of the English language. This move not only reveals Robinson’s ambitious desire to show off her artistic talent but also her intention to express the unique kind of ambivalence inherent in “legitimate sonnets.” While “English sonnets” use the final couplets to summarize the poetic theme or present a reversal, in “legitimate sonnets,” the gap between the octave and the sestet frequently remains open. By utilizing this very gap for conveying her oscillation between reason and feelings, Robinson succeeds in displaying her ambivalent attitude toward extreme passion.
Additionally, Robinson’s “legitimate sonnets” attempt to recreate Sappho’s unique aesthetics of “the sublime.” Instead of following the epistolary form of Ovid’s original Sappho to Phaon, she composes a series of individual sonnets, which contain transitory emotions in diverse manners. Avoiding the narrative structure of Ovid’s version, Robinson suggests that each of her sonnets only offers a fragment of Sappho’s subjectivity that can never be construed as a whole. In the period when Burke’s distinction between “the sublime” and “the beautiful” was generally understood in gender terms, Robinson’s reconstruction of Sappho’s poetics of the sublime undermined the contemporary assumption about the feminine aesthetics. This tendency is also evident in the masculinized poetic diction invoking “the sublime” used for describing Sappho’s suicide and subsequent unification with the natural world. Seeking the legitimacy of the Petrarchan sonnet form and connecting her poems to the lineage of prominent male authors, Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon aspires to cross the boundaries assigned to contemporary women writers.

영어초록

This essay aims at understanding Mary Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon as a text that embodies the author’s struggle to reinvent herself as a female poet. As Robinson’s theatrical career preceded the period of her poetic production and her affair with the Prince of Wales was widely scandalized, the public called her “Perdita,” the nickname that connoted sexuality and theatricality. In this situation, Robinson attempted to discover her poetic voice by resorting to the figure of “Sappho,” the ancient muse that she yearned to equate with herself to an extent.
In search of her poetic identity, Robinson deploys the form of “legitimate sonnets,” which was supposed to be difficult to create due to the complex syllabic structure of the English language. This move not only reveals Robinson’s ambitious desire to show off her artistic talent but also her intention to express the unique kind of ambivalence inherent in “legitimate sonnets.” While “English sonnets” use the final couplets to summarize the poetic theme or present a reversal, in “legitimate sonnets,” the gap between the octave and the sestet frequently remains open. By utilizing this very gap for conveying her oscillation between reason and feelings, Robinson succeeds in displaying her ambivalent attitude toward extreme passion.
Additionally, Robinson’s “legitimate sonnets” attempt to recreate Sappho’s unique aesthetics of “the sublime.” Instead of following the epistolary form of Ovid’s original Sappho to Phaon, she composes a series of individual sonnets, which contain transitory emotions in diverse manners. Avoiding the narrative structure of Ovid’s version, Robinson suggests that each of her sonnets only offers a fragment of Sappho’s subjectivity that can never be construed as a whole. In the period when Burke’s distinction between “the sublime” and “the beautiful” was generally understood in gender terms, Robinson’s reconstruction of Sappho’s poetics of the sublime undermined the contemporary assumption about the feminine aesthetics. This tendency is also evident in the masculinized poetic diction invoking “the sublime” used for describing Sappho’s suicide and subsequent unification with the natural world. Seeking the legitimacy of the Petrarchan sonnet form and connecting her poems to the lineage of prominent male authors, Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon aspires to cross the boundaries assigned to contemporary women writers.

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