Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of Greek Form

Kolocotroni, V. (2017) Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of Greek Form. In: Papargyriou, E., Assinder, S. and Holton, D. (eds.) Greece in British Women’s Literary Imagination, 1913-2013. Peter Lang: New York. ISBN 9781433131936

Abstract

As Marina Warner has argued in her panoramic study Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (1985), the presence and coded meaning of allegorical female figures still underpin broadly accepted human values, in both an ideological and imaginative sense. Taking its lead from this assertion, this essay considers the allegorical uses to which Greek form has been put by a selection of British women writers of the twentieth century. In their encounters with and constructions of Greece as a repository of ancient yet persistent and prescient forms (in the shape of maidens or monuments), the classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, novelists Virginia Woolf and Ann Quin and poet and travel writer Dorothy Una Ratcliffe create meaningful allegories for their literary, but also personal and political pursuits.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Kolocotroni, Dr Vassiliki
• Authors: Kolocotroni, V.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PE English; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General); P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• ISBN: 9781433131936