 Mary TodayBarry Spurr Chapter Chapter 5 in See the Virgin Blest, 2007, pp 197-218 from Palgrave Macmillan Abstract: Abstract Writing of the “ancient feminine religion of Northern Europe,” Seamus Heaney identifies a difference between “masculine, active, hard, phallic” ways of working, thinking, and praying, and the “yielding, maternal” influence of the complex forms of Marian Christianity that have influenced his own poetry.1 “For Heaney,” Eamon Duffy has written, “Christianity without its Marian dimension is an arid, abstract thing.”2 Yet, our study has shown that even Mary’s maternal qualities are not exclusively yielding, although her unique suspectibility to poetic representation—more often than not, by male poets—reveals a creative submission to the forms and purposes of poetry that, paradoxically, give her a presence and a voice that affirm a host of roles and qualities, by no means restricted to gender stereotyping or other constraints, through the centuries: Mary transcends the media, the temporal and regional restrictions, and human limitations that govern her image in any one era. The meaning of the icon outweighs the individual artist or epoch.3 Keywords: Individual Artist; Holy Ghost; Fervent Trust; Poetic Representation; Wooden Chair (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-12140-0_6 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-12140-0_6 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan |
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