John William Waterhouse And His Muses: Exploring Female Image and Victorian Female Roles in Waterhouse's Paintings (original) (raw)
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Floating down beyond Camelot: The Lady of Shalott and the Audio-Visual Imagination
Into Another's Skin. Selected Essays in Honour of María Luisa Dañobeitia. Eds. Mauricio D. Aguilera Linde, María José de la Torre Moreno, Laura Torres Zúñiga, 2012
Alfred Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" provided the perfect nourishment for a Victorian reading public fascinated by tragic stories of damsels in distress, particularly if the setting was medieval and King Arthur made an appearance. The story of the fair Lady, cursed to die after disobeying the mysterious command that forced her to weave in her tapestry the images reflected in her mirror without looking directly at Camelot, captivated the imagination of contemporary artists, including members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Although it ceased to be a favoured subject matter for painters after the First World War, the appeal of the Lady never died. Her story keeps inspiring writers, musicians and filmmakers; quotations from the poem are used in books, sometimes providing a novel its title, in songs and films. My purpose in the pages that follow is to look at the journey travelled by the Lady from a 13 th -century Tuscan novella to a 21 st -century TV series, using my own encounter(s) with her as narrative thread. It is a modest but heart-felt attempt to thank María Luisa Dañobeitia Fernández for having fanned my passion for literature and sharing with me her knowledge about virtually everything for almost two decades.
New Voices in Classical Reception Studies Issue 10, 2015
This article examines Frederick Sandys’ and J.W. Waterhouse’s depictions of sorceresses, through the objects surrounding the subjects. It argues that these objects can tell us something important not only about the figure of the witch, but about female roles and men’s perception of them in Victorian Britain. Through exploration of myth and the occult, male gaze turns to female agency, an agency expressed through objects. Furthermore, the symbolism integral to the paintings invites us to explore similar gender relations in the ancient world. This article traces the witches back through their myths to the Greek texts in which they appear, and asks to what extent these objects, and their implications for female agency and male responses to it, have their roots in the Greek tradition. Women in Greek epic are treated as objects, caught up in a male-controlled network of exchange. They are characters with limited agency, in that they are not the conventionally spotlighted protagonists. This does not mean, however, that they do nothing behind the scenes. ‘As much as men may define women as exchange objects, there is always the possibility that women will find a way to express their own agency’ (Lyons 2012:19). That this female agency is often expressed through objects is therefore a subversion of the male viewpoint, as women enact their agency through the very form they themselves are thought by men to represent. In focusing in on the Pre-Raphaelites’ presentation of objects, this article begins to peel away layers of reception and interpretation, showing that the eclectic clutter with which the artists surround their witches reflects the eclectic sources of the Victorian imagination.
The aim and scope of this present paper is to define the notion of female identity in the web of Victorian society. Tennyson " s "The Lady of Shalott" is highly vivifying the status of a girl-embodies the stylistic approach of the ideal beauty and of deep projection with the subtle vail of ignorance-who, by unknowingly or may knowingly, procreates the imaginary web around her, which is proved to be, at once, the misfortune to her life. Tennyson " s Shalott even is not aware what curse is to be befallen on her, but may be able to understand, in her psychological stances, that an uncanny will be fallen on her at the point of time. Death is subjected very naturally through the entire work of "The Lady of Shalott" and Tennyson means to do that easily in a very difficult catastrophically way. "The Lady of Shalott" is the superb identification of Tennyson " s canonical phenomenon of deep mourning. She is caught within the web but she shows her ability and courage to break through the proliferation of the earth, her artificial belonging. Her identity is shattered and she does not try revive her feelings from the context of female perspectives like that of a Victorian woman. But her resistance of her patience through a very long time was, by unexpectedly, broken and finally lead herself towards reality as a real being. Claustrophobic projection in the web, canonical phenomenon of deep mourning, uncanny, artificial belonging, misfortune to her life.
Re-mediating Ophelia with Pre-Raphaelite Eyes, in: INTERLITTERARIA 2015, 20/2: 171–183
The Shakespearean fair Ophelia has become through the centuries a multi faceted heroine apt to embody all the victims of patriarchal domination, but also the evil and victimized decadent lady, who would annihilate her tormentor. Similar oxymoronic identifications were possible partly because of the vagueness that distinguishes her character in the Shakespearean tragedy, and partly because of the fluctuating status of adolescent girls in society. Moreover, the contemporary reception of Ophelia has strongly been biased by the treatment of this literary myth by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In the Victorian era, when issues about the condition, the power, and the rights of women were raised with particular force, Ophelia soon became an icon of sublime but dangerous beauty. Such an association even came to the point that Elizabeth Siddal – poet, painter, and model of Millais’s Ophelia – was identified with the Shakespearean heroine, by virtue of her unquenchable thirst for knowledge, her unrequited love, her prettiness, and the torture she allegedly provoked to Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s conscience.
The Drowned Woman: The Symbolic Duality of Water in Victorian Literature and Art Fell in the weeping Brooke, her cloathes spred wide, And Mermaid-like, a while they bore her up, Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her owne distresse, Or like a creature Natiue, and indued unto that Element but long it could not be, Till that her garments, heavy with her drinke, Pul'd the poore wretch from her melodious lay, To muddy death 1
Trans*tastic Morphologies: Life-Modelling Theatre and 'The Lady of Shalott'.
Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities and Other Queer Crossings, 2017
This chapter is from a collection of essays, 'Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities' edited by Dr Nina Kane and Jude Woods for Cambridge Scholars Publishing (June 2017). In this, Dr Kane explores the potential of Tennyson’s literary figure The Lady of Shalott and J.W. Waterhouse’s 1894 painting of the subject to act as a creative catalyst for exploration of the gender binary and gender crossings. Drawing specifically on her own life-model theatre practice (essentially dramaturgical and performative), on the gallery education and community projects of Cast-Off Drama and referencing the visual arts work of Phil Sayers, Margaret Harrison and Tony Bevan, Kane charts a progression of the life-model performer from one side of the binary (female) to the other (male). This Trans*tastic passing is enabled through shifting identification with both the Lady of the poem and Lancelot, the Knight, and is presented to the reader here in a rhizomatic and hairy weaving of textual and visual threads. If citing this chapter, please do so as follows: N. Kane, 'Trans*tastic Morphologies: Life-Modelling Theatre and The Lady of Shalott.' In N. Kane and J. Woods (eds.), Reflections on Female and Trans* Masculinities, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.