Michael Field's Paratextual Poetics: Portraying a Protomodernist Sappho

Keywords: paratext, Michael Field, Long Ago, protomodernist, past

Abstract

This article offers an innovative perspective on Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper’s Long Ago (1889), their Sapphic volume of verse published under the Michael Field pseudonym. Rather than propounding new interpretations of the lyrics in the collection, I focus on its paratextual apparatus –from the cover and the frontispiece to the endnotes or appendix– with the aim of unveiling a significant aspect that has been overlooked by most critics: the fact that, in its rich paratextuality, Long Ago possesses an effective illocutionary force that seduces the reader, pre-establishes a clear interpretive framework, and activates an innovative dialogue with the past. This paratextual dialogue, I conclude, results in a protomodernist reworking of Sappho as an enigmatic, unstable, and radically open (para)textual figure –one that is always ready to be made new.

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Author Biography

Mayron Estefan Cantillo Lucuara, Universitat de València

Mayron Estefan Cantillo-Lucuara is Junior Lecturer in English Studies at  the Universitat de València (Spain). His research focuses on nineteenth-century poetry with special emphasis on how it responds to new formalist approaches, how it converses with continental philosophy, and how it is received  in other literary traditions. He has written extensively on Michael Field in peer-reviewed journals such as Lectora: Revista de Dones y Textualidad, Miscelánea: A Journal of Anglo-American Studies, Anuario de Estudios Filológicos, Cuadernos de Investigaciones Filológicas o ES Review, among others.

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Published
2023-04-11
How to Cite
Cantillo Lucuara M. E. (2023). Michael Field’s Paratextual Poetics: Portraying a Protomodernist Sappho. Complutense Journal of English Studies, 31, e72361. https://doi.org/10.5209/cjes.72361
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Articles