Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection And The Woman Poet

by Germaine Greer

The term 'slip-shod sibyls' is adapted from a gibe of Alexander Pope. It encapsulates the common contempt for the half-educated women who dared to expose themselves in the literary market-place, convinced that they were born poets.
In this collection Germaine Greer argues that the problem is not that women who wrote poetry in English before 1900 were ignored but that, when most women were unable to express themselves in written form at all, and only a tiny minority of them dared to write in metre, the female poet was given undue attention, flattered and exploited only to be rejected and humiliated in her own lifetime and forgotten by posterity.
She argues that as much as we yearn to have women's poetry seriously studied in schools and universities, what has come down to us is not worthy of inclusion in the canon, for all kinds of reasons. In many cases the texts are inauthentic and cannot be relied upon to represent women's work or women's sensibility. In virtually all cases the poetry is intensely derivative and cannot be evaluated by readers who are unfamiliar with the poets' models.

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry, History, Literature, Literary Criticism, Feminism, Womens Studies

544 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Germaine Greer is an Australian born writer, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century.

Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her ground-breaking The Female Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her overnight into a household name and bringing her both adulation and criticism. She is also the author of Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984), The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991), and most recently Shakespeare's Wife (2007).

Reviews

[Dfordoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Germaine Greer’s Slip-Shod Sibyls is a typically provocative and fascinating account of the careers of female poets from the time of Sappho up to the 20th century. Greer argues that the biggest problem facing women poets in the past wasn’t the difficulty of getting published, but rather the fact that it was too easy for a woman poet to get published. Women poets were often extravagantly over-praised, and thus had insufficient incentive to properly develop their gifts. Many of the women poets who have attracted the enthusiastic attention of feminist scholars were in fact third-rate and had they been men their work would have been quite rightly consigned to literary oblivion.

She also makes some interesting points about the cult of suicide among female poets that reached its peak in the 20th century, and suggests that poetry exercised a particular fascination for self-destructive women and then encouraged their self-destructiveness even further.

She’s very amusing on the subject of Sappho, on the creation of a kind of Sappho industry in spite of the fact that virtually none of her poetry actually survives, and on the way the few fragments of her poetry have been over-interpreted and misinterpreted by enthusiastic feminist academics.

Her chapter on Christina Rossetti is especially interesting. Although often considered a major religious poet Greer sees her poetry as being much more about sex, and specifically a tragically repressed sexuality, than about religion. Her observations on Elizabeth Barrett Browning are rather eye-opening as well.

Greer is incapable of writing a dull book, and whether you agree or disagree with her conclusions it’s a stimulating read.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I expected, for the most part. I was looking for biography, not poetry critique but interesting in parts, nonetheless.

[Jill Treftz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate this book.

Okay, I haven't read all of it, and Greer does make some very interesting arguments in part. But her scholarship is slipshod at best, particularly in her chapter on Letitia Landon. I can't read it without grinding my teeth at her apparent inability to verify basic facts like the spelling of names and the dates of publication of various texts.

[Moira]

Got this mainly for the long L.E.L. essay, which basically rehabilitated her reputation.