Download or read book The Lesbian Muse and Poetic Identity, 1889–1930 written by Sarah Parker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history the poetic muse has tended to be (a passive) female and the poet male. This dynamic caused problems for late Victorian and twentieth-century women poets; how could the muse be reclaimed and moved on from the passive role of old? Parker looks at fin-de-siècle and modernist lyric poets to investigate how they overcame these challenges and identifies three key strategies: the reconfiguring of the muse as a contemporary instead of a historical/mythological figure; the muse as a male figure; and an interchangeable poet/muse relationship, granting agency to both.