Yes, masculine beauty is praised, but usually by other men in the poetry
-- Marlowe, Shakespeare, Barnfield, etc.
On Sun, 22 Feb 2004, Douglas Eskew wrote:
> Katherine Eggert writes:
> >In connection to Jim Nohrnberg's posting about terrible beauty, I
> >wonder if masculine beauty ever provokes such a response, in
> >Renaissance lit or its predecessor texts. Dot and others have made
> >clear that you don't have to be a man to be astonied by a woman in
> >this way, but is the astonier ever male?
>
> My favorite comes from Theocritus' second Idyll (aka, "The
> Sorceress," "The Enchantress," etc.). Here a woman named Simaetha
> tells us what happens when Delphis first arrives at her house:
>
> I no sooner was aware of him stepping light-foot across the threshold
> of my door [...] than I turned chiller than snow from head to foot,
> and from my brow, like the damp dews, started to sweat, nor could I
> speak a word, nay, not so much as babes that whimper in their sleep
> calling to their mother dear, but all my fair body grew stiff as it
> were a doll's. (Gow's translation)
>
> Doug Eskew
> University of Texas at Austin
|