Duffy Flashcards
what does Deryn Rees-Jones suggest about the patriarchy and how Duffy presents it?
Duffy shows ‘the difficulty the patriarchy presents to both men and women’
What does Bernard O’Keeffe state about Duffy and otherness?
‘Duffy’s concern with the duplicitous nature of language is matched by concern for the way language can alienate, creating a sense of otherness and distance’- links to LGBT+ context, as Duffy is a lesbian and the first LGBT poet laureate she wants to give voice to the plight of disadvantaged others
What does Eavan Boland argue about Larkin and Duffy?
‘Duffy takes Larkin’s tone and inscribes it on the life of a contemporary woman’
What does Michael Woods argue about the way in which Duffy presents time?
‘Duffy’s poems explore how time is inevitably cruel and takes things away from us’- mean time link- all about time and passing of time, nostalgia etc
What does Jody Allen-Randolph argue about how Duffy presents the tragic view of life and how it compares to Larkin?
‘Duffy shares Larkin’s tragic view of life’- Havisham? Mean Time? Litany? Confession? Room? First Love? everything comes to an end, time is a destructive implacable force
what does Eavan Boland argue about Duffy’s presentation of women?
‘challenges and alters power relationships by making women both the subject and object of love poems’- small female skull etc?
key Duffy context
themes include representation of reality; the construction of the self; gender issues; contemporary culture; and many different forms of alienation, oppression and social inequality. Links to O’Keeffe’s argument that Duffy uses language to avoid alienation of others- evident by lack of gender pronouns?
She writes in everyday, conversational language, making her poems appear deceptively simple
What may link Duffy to Larkin besides a ‘tragic view’ of life perceived by Jody Allen-Randolph?
dry humour and nostalgia
When does Duffy become Britain’s first female poet laureate?
2009
What does a Telegraph writer state that may mean Duffy is idolised by some feminist critics?
After 350 years of male dominance, the new royal poet is a Glaswegian lesbian […] Ten years ago she was passed over, but now her time has come.
(William Langley, Telegraph, 2 May 2009)
Therefore highlights a time of change and transition for women
key context for Duffy
first female British poet laureate
LGBT+ (lesbian)
from Glasgow
poetry explores time as a destructive force, the expression of self, contemporary issues in society like religion, social hierarchy and plight of disadvantaged others, being LGBT+ (lack of gender pronouns)
