Diana, Dido, and The Fair Maid of Dunsmore: classical precursors, common tunes, and the question of consent in seventeenth-century balladry
Reid, Lindsay Ann
Reid, Lindsay Ann
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Publication Date
2017-11-24
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Article
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Reid, Lindsay Ann. (2017). Diana, Dido, and The Fair Maid of Dunsmore: classical precursors, common tunes, and the question of consent in seventeenth-century balladry. The Seventeenth Century, 1-23. doi: 10.1080/0268117X.2017.1391713
Abstract
The tragedy of Isabel of Dunsmore an English shepherd s daughter who commits suicide after being impregnated by a social superior is recounted in two similar, yet lyrically distinct seventeenth-century ballads: The Lamentable Song of the Lord Wigmoore Gouernor of Warwicke Castle and the Fayre Maid of Dunsmoore and The Fair Maid of Dunsmore s Lamentation Occasioned by Lord Wigmore Once Governour of Warwick-Castle. What is remarkable about these two ballads is that, despite commonalities in plot and even pacing, they offer divergent interpretations of a shared series of narrative events. What is more, both ballads do so by suggestively juxtaposing Isabel s story both textually and musically with varying mythological precursors: Lucrece, Diana, Callisto, and Dido. This essay seeks to untangle how these classically inspired intertexts serve to characterise Isabel and Wigmore s relationship in each ballad, particularly when it comes to the fraught issue of female sexual consent.
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Publisher DOI
10.1080/0268117X.2017.1391713
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland