Kirjahaku

Book three of the Italian poet Matteo Maria Boiardo's epic poem Orlando innamorato (Orlando in Love) was published posthumously in 1494; in 1532, the poet Ludovico Ariosto published his final version of a sequel, Orlando furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando). At the end of his poem, Boiardo tells the tale of the princess Fiordispina's unfulfilled desire for the maiden warrior Bradamante, a story that Ariosto retells in the body of his later work. In Hopeless Love, Mary-Michelle DeCoste examines both versions of the Fiordispina and Bradamante episode using feminist and queer theory. DeCoste then links these treatments of queer female desire to their wider cultural contexts by exploring their antecedents in genres such as medieval romance epic and hagiography and by examining similar tropes in other sixteenth-century romance epics. An important work on a previously overlooked subject, Hopeless Love uncovers the diffusion of queer female desire in Italian literature and promotes a better understanding of sexuality in medieval and Renaissance Europe.

In this exquisite collection, DeCoste distills quotidian and epiphanic memories of a woman's life- a childhood crush, a bedtime story, a brief affair - into moments of breath on the page. Set among lilacs, forsythias, crickets and snakes, composed while reading Arabic poetry and The Economist, DeCoste's poems find their way into the reader's own experience and memory. Lilacs is a gift of attention. -Lisa L. Moore, author of 24 Hours of Men and Archibald A. Hill Professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin These witty, acerbic, formally deft poems offer many pleasures as they anatomize the estrangements and infidelities of various intimacies. In such poems as her terrific sonnet "Is That All There Is?", DeCoste is clear-eyed, unsentimental, and heart-wrenchingly good. -Geoffrey Brock, author of Voices Bright Flags DeCoste's handling of language, in both free and formal verse, is as deft and incisive as it is lyrical. Of special delight is the way DeCoste uses traditional forms to their supple utmost to shape and clarify the often-murky landscape of modern life. The poems in Lilacs linger in the mind and heart of the reader. -Leslie Schultz, author of Concertina