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FDU PRESS
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| Scholarly Review |
 | Tiresian Poetics: Modernism, Sexuality, Voice, 1888-2001
ISBN# 9780838639375
Reviewed by: John McRae
The Michealian, Issue Two: December 2010 |
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"There is something very queer about Tiresias" is the first sentence of this book. The name of Tiresias, the blind seer most widely known as a character in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex has been imbued with mystery, a "liminal identity" as Ed Madden calls it, where even his (trans)sexuality is brought to bear leading to a "crossing of epistemological boundaries" such that "Tiresias has come to function as a kind of ambiguous cultural shorthand for variant or deviant sexualities."
Whether or not this shorthand is actually necessary or even desirable is not questioned in this book: it is simply taken as read that Tiresias is a useful metaphor (or shorthand) which opens up a range of critical insights. Madden applies this shorthand to an exciting range of texts: The Waste Land is the most obvious one, one of many in which Tiresias actually appears. He also discusses very well indeed a range of texts from Michael Field to Djuna Barnes and Austin Clarke.
These are not the most widely studied of modern voices, but the "Tiresian poetic" which allows Madden to bring them together is an approach to the expression of sexuallity in a post-Foucauldian context.
The range of texts he analyzes, together with cross-references and allusions make for a truly stimulating intellectual journey, taking us through more than a century of writing, several countries and genres, to the post-AIDS generation, where the ambiguities take on new shapes and need new voices.
This is an exemplary piece of work. It is very well written (which is sufficiently unusual as to be remarkable in this field); it is not always easy: many of its arguments are challenging and will remain controversial; but its approach to gender(s) and discourse(s) is a major step forward, and the case is well argued throughout. as a contribution to the studies of the authors it handles, perhaps especially Michael Field, it may or may not be seen as changing the landscape, but it will certainly be seen as a major landmark in that landscape.
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