Tennyson - "The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson"

Herbert Baird Stimpson - "The Tory Maid"

Benedetto Croce - "Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic"

Anonymous - "The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Earthwork Out Of Tuscany

M >> Maurice Hewlett >> Earthwork Out Of Tuscany




Mariota, the hardy wife of the metal-smith, is not for one of your
quality, though the wench is well enough now with her baby on her arm and
the best of her seen by a poet and made enduring. He, like our Bernardo,
had motherhood in such esteem that he held it would ransom a sin. A sin? I
am no casuist to discuss rewards and punishments; but if Socrates were
rightly informed and sin indeed ignorance, I have no whips for Mariota's
square shoulders. Her baby, I warrant, plucked her from the burning. I am
not so sure but you might find in that girl a responsive spirit, and--is
the saying too hard?--a teacher. Contentment with a few things was never
one of your virtues, madam.

There is a lady whose name has been whispered through my pages, a lady
with whom I must make peace if I can. Had I known her, as Dante did, in
the time of her nine-year excellence and followed her (with an interlude,
to be sure, for Gentucca) through the slippery ways of two lives with much
eating of salt bread, I might have grown into her favour. But I never did
know Monna Beatrice Portinari; and when I met her afterwards as my Lady
Theologia I thought her something imperious and case-hardened. Now here
and there some words of mine (for she has a high stomach) may have given
offence. I have hinted that her court is a slender one in Italy, the
service paid her lip-service; the lowered eyes and bated breath reserved
for her; but for Fede her sister, tears and long kisses and the clinging.
Well! the Casa Cattolica is a broad foundation: I find Francis of Umbria
at the same board with Sicilian Thomas. If I cleave to the one must I
despise the other? Lady Fede has my heart and Lady Dottrina must put aside
the birch if she would share that little kingdom. _Religio habet_,
said Pico; _theologia autem invenit_. Let her find. But she must be
speedy, for I promise her the mood grows on me as I become
_italianato_; and I cannot predict when the other term of the
proposition may be accomplished. For one thing, Lady Theologia, I praise
you not. Sympathy seems to me of the essence, the healing touch an
excellent thing in woman. But you told Virgil,

"Io son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale,
Che la vostra miseria non mi tange."

Sympathy, Madonna? And Virgil hopeless! On these terms I had rather gloom
with the good poet (whose fault in your eyes was that he knew in what he
had believed) than freeze with you and Aquinas on your peak of hyaline.
And as I have found you, Donna Beatrice, so in the main have they of whom
I pitch my pipe. Here and there a man of them got exercise for his fingers
in your web; here and there one, as Pico the young Doctor of yellow hair
and nine hundred heresies, touched upon the back of your ivory dais that
he might jump from thence to the poets out beyond you in the Sun. Your
great Dante, too, loved you through all. But, Madonna, he had loved you
before when you were--

Donna pietosa e di novella etade,

and, as became his lordly soul, might never depart from the faith he had
in you. For me, I protest I love Religion your warm-bosomed mate too well
to turn from her; yet I would not on that account grieve her (who treats
you well out of the cup of her abounding charity) by aspersing you. And if
I may not kiss your foot as you would desire, I may bow when I am in the
way with you; not thanking God I am not as you are, but, withal, wishing
you that degree of interest in a really excellent world with which He has
blessed me and my like, the humble fry.

Lastly, to the Spirits which are in the shrines of the cities of Tuscany,
I lift up my hands with the offering of my thin book. To Lucca dove-like
and demure, to Prato, the brown country-girl, to Pisa, winsome maid-of-
honour to the lady of the land, to Pistoja, the ruddy-haired and ample,
and to Siena, the lovely wretch, black-eyed and keen as a hawk; even to
Perugia, the termagant, with a scar on her throat; but chiefest to the
Lady Firenze, the pale Queen crowned with olive--to all of you, adored and
adorable sisters, I offer homage as becomes a postulant, the repentance of
him who has not earned his reward, thanksgiving, and the praise I have not
been able to utter. And I send you, Book, out to those ladies with the
supplication of good Master Cino, schoolman and poet, saying,

E se tu troverai donne gentile,
Ivi girai; che la ti vo mandare;
E dono a lor d' audienza chiedi.

Poi di a costor: Gittatevi a lor piedi,
E dite, chi vi manda e per che fare,
Udite donne, esti valletti umili.

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