ABSTRACT

Women’s involvement in the reception history of the epic genre is largely unwritten. This article explores how women writers of the period used the mock heroic to write of their own histories and experiences. I propose that three distinct developments in the eighteenth-century literary landscape influenced the engagement of women writers with epic: an increasing confidence to enter the works of Homer and Virgil from the margins; the centring of women in fragmentary translations in miscellany volumes; and the rise of the mock-heroic, which diluted the boundaries between traditional and innovative topics apt for epic application. Mary Leapor, a working-class poet and kitchen maid, is not a figure naturally associated with writing in the epic mode. However, I argue that her poetry constitutes an experiment with this mode and is emblematic of the changes to eighteenth-century literary culture that opened out the classics to many readers. But where the mock-heroic often trivialised women, Leapor’s mock country-house poem, “Crumble Hall” (1751), uses the classical space of the underworld to write of, elevate, and celebrate not warriors and heroes but the labouring classes. Leapor is a surprising but vital exemplar in the reception history of both the classics and epic poetry.

摘要

女性对史诗类型的接受历史的参与在很大程度上是不成文的。本文探讨了这一时期的女性作家如何利用假英雄来书写自己的历史和经历。我认为，十八世纪文学格局的三个独特发展影响了女性作家对史诗的参与：越来越有信心从边缘进入荷马和维吉尔的作品；以女性为中心的杂卷中的零散翻译；模拟英雄的兴起，淡化了适合史诗应用的传统主题和创新主题之间的界限。玛丽·利波尔（Mary Leapor）是一位工人阶级诗人和厨房女仆，她并不是一个与史诗模式写作自然联系在一起的人物。然而，我认为她的诗歌构成了这种模式的实验，并且象征着十八世纪文学文化的变化，这种变化向许多读者开放了经典。但在模仿英雄常常轻视女性的地方，利普尔的模仿乡间别墅的诗《崩溃大厅》（1751）使用地下世界的古典空间来书写、提升和歌颂的不是战士和英雄，而是劳动阶级。在古典诗歌和史诗的接受史上，利波尔是一个令人惊讶但又至关重要的典范。