Information AboutPoetess |
|
Use of this word is criticised by ''. Like many such words, its use might well be unexceptionable when it is used simply to convey two items of data about an author in a single word. The true measure of the distrust for this word stems from the situation that the use of the word is somewhat more complicated than that. The word "poetess" means more than a conjunction of the concepts of "poet" and "woman". The word "poetess" is often used in a mildly Pejorative and dismissive sense; like all the best pejoratives, it keeps open the option to deny that the person who used the word meant anything of the kind. In his ''Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot'', Alexander Pope wrote the lines: Is there a Parson, much bemus'd in beer, A maudlin Poetess, a rhyming Peer. . . Marguerite Ogden put the issue in a nutshell, writing about "the word ''poetess'', with all its suggestion of tepid and insipid achievement." By this repute, a poetess is a minor woman poet, an authoress of sentimental or conventional verse. Formerly, in the public mind this pose; she writes verse that is vaguely sensual, and given to moony Oracular announcements, and couples this with a habit of enthusing over her Bodily Humour s. Referring to a woman who writes poetry as a poetess risks calling forth this stereotype. |
|
|