TY - BOOK AU - Levy,Gayle A. TI - Refiguring the muse SN - 9780820437828 U1 - 841.00915 23 PY - 1999/// CY - New York PB - P. Lang KW - French poetry -- 19th century -- History and criticism KW - French poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism KW - Muses (Greek deities) in literature KW - Women in literature KW - History and criticism KW - French poetry N2 - Although the muse is an integral element in discussions of poetic creation, no extended study before Refiguring the Muse has addressed the role of this figure in French literature. This work focuses on the poetry of Stephane Mallarme, Albert Samain, Sully Prudhomme, Anna de Noailles, and Renee Vivien and takes as its central concern the relationships between poetic expression and the social, cultural, and historical representations of gender between 1870 and 1914. Dr.Levy's approach to the subject is twofold. First, she redefines the term "muse" in order to take into account the changes that the word has undergone within the French historical and literary context since the thirteenth century. Then, she shows how the figure of the poetic muse itself changes and begins to be liberated from the nineteenth-century concept that had kept the trope frozen in a passive role ER -