• Bendy Ann Cherian

The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy discusses sexism, bereavement, equality and birth, and identifies the ‘other’ as the significant. The sentiments towards men and their deeds as discussed in Duffy’s poems are influenced by her own experiences, the outcomes of living in a patriarchal world and voicing the other. The postmodern reworking devised in these poems makes them relevant for the employment of subversion. The personae in the poems defamiliarize a familiar narrative by adopting a feminist perspective along with a reworking or rather a subversion of form and content of poetry and also the content and genre of popular tales used in the poems. The poems celebrate postmodernism further by deviating from the concept of a hero, a man who is till then accepted as the ‘center’, by giving his tale a renewed trivial or bizarre narration. As Peter Barry notes, “The major effort [of feminist perspective and criticism] went into exposing what might be called the mechanisms of patriarchy, that is, the cultural mindset in men and women which perpetuated sexual inequality”. This effort is the key factor that binds various parts of each poem in the anthology. The paper analyses the poems “Mrs Darwin”, “Mrs Lazarus”, “Mrs Faust” and “Mrs Icarus” to bring out the postmodern reworking of poems and popular tales as portrayed in them.

Duffy, Postmodernism, Postmodern reworking, subversion, feminism

"Postmodern Reworking of Poems and Popular Tales: Duffy’s Feminist Perspective and The World’s Wife", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no.965-966, June 2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1908299.pdf

"Postmodern Reworking of Poems and Popular Tales: Duffy’s Feminist Perspective and The World’s Wife", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no. pp965-966, June 2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1908299.pdf