Review
A Plea for the Doric (review)
Victorian Review, Vol.35(1), pp.41-45
04/01/2009
DOI: 10.1353/vcr.2009.0024
Abstract
At the saft gloamin' hour, "when the kye's comin' hame," And the young heart is loupin' to hear the dear name, What tongue like the Doric love's saft tale can tell, 'Neath the lang yellow broom, an' the red heather-bell? I'm wae for Aul Reekie, her big men o' print [Edinburgh] To Lunnon ha'e gane, to be nearer the mint; But the coinage o' brain looks no a'e haet better, Though Doric is banish'd frae sang, tale, and letter. [...]the glosses given above may help readers "hear" Hamilton's melodic flourishes and grace notes in the language she mourned ("Wallace the wicht," "sae pithy an' pawkie," "sense and slee humour an' feelin' sae fu'," "to read mither tongue on that mither's fire en'," "Bannockburn / ... turn," and "winna ken / ... fire en'"). [...]understood, "A Plea for the Doric" is a witty and sophisticated poem, at once homely and subtle, angry, and resigned. [...]Hamilton's deeper and more universal point—the aching ambivalence of assimilation and repression of cultural identity in all its forms—has continued to haunt authors of works in the commercial and imperial "Latin" of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. More information on these poets and their works may be found in Florence Boos's Working-Class Women Poets in Victorian England: An Anthology (Broadview, 2008), which also contains a bibliography of "Some Little-Educated or Working-Class Victorian Women Poets Who Published Books" (350-51).
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A Plea for the Doric (review)
- Creators
- Florence Boos
- Resource Type
- Review
- Publication Details
- Victorian Review, Vol.35(1), pp.41-45
- Publisher
- Johns Hopkins University Press; Edmonton
- DOI
- 10.1353/vcr.2009.0024
- ISSN
- 0848-1512
- eISSN
- 1923-3280
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 04/01/2009
- Academic Unit
- English; International Programs
- Record Identifier
- 9984398850202771
Metrics
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