Journal of Literature and Art Studies, March 2018, Vol. 8, No. 3, 373-377 doi: 10.17265/2159-5836/2018.03.004 Subversion of Patriarchy: Intertextuality in Carol Ann Duffy’sThe World’s Wife ZENG Jing-yun, LI Ju-yuan (Corresponding author) Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China The World’s Wife(1999), written by Carol Ann Duffy, who is the first woman and first openly LGBT person appointed Britain’s poet Laureate, is a collection of poems which makes full use of intertextuality to show Duffy’s subversion to patriarchy. In this collection, histories and myths are parodied, quoted, alluded and even rewritten. Women in her poems are given chances to speak out for themselves, which can be seen as a form of resistance against patriarchy. In this article, constitutive intertextuality as well as manifest intertextuality like parody, quotation and allusion inThe World’s Wifewill be discussed specifically. By analyzing how those intertextual features are adopted as a form of resistance against patriarchy, this article aims to help readers form a better perception of the feminism Duffy raises, and tries to help more women who are being suppressed by men, to find and reconstruct their identities. Keywords: The World’s Wife, Carol Ann Duffy, Subversion to patriarchy, Intertextuality Introduction Carol Ann Duffy andThe World’s Wife As a Scottish poet and playwright and a Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, Carol Ann Duffy is also the first woman and first LGBT who was openly offered Britain’s Poet Laureate. “Duffy had been considered for the position of Poet Laureate in 1999, but because she was a lesbian, she was not appointed the position” (ZHOU, 2013, p. 2). One of the reasons why she can obtain this honor as a woman is the special works she has written and the achievements she has made. Her main collections include Standing Female Nude(1985), the winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award,Selling Manhattan(1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award,Mean Time(1993), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award. The World’s Wifeis Carol Ann Duffy’s first themed collection of poems, which was first published in 1999. The themes address issues such as sexism, equality, bereavement and birth. In this collection, Duffy takes characters, stories, histories and myths which focus on men, to present them anew for us to look at not only the women that were previously obscured behind the men, but important events in history from a female perspective. The collection includes 30 poems, as Lanone (2008, p. 186) noted, “the title recalls George Eliot’s famous definition of gossip: ‘Public opinion, in these cases, is always of the feminine gender—not the world, but the world’s wife’” (Eliot, 1996, p. 490). Acknowledgements: This paper is part of the outputs of The Guangzhou University Scientific Research Project for High-level Personnel (No. 2700050348) and Guangdong Province Social Science Post-funded Project (No. GD17HWW01).
