Wendy Cope's Use of Parody in Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.199411757

Abstract

Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, an English best-seller of the late 1980s,  established Cope's reputation as a parodist of canonical poetic styles. Yet, in  some ways, her writing is subservient to the canon: her style is heavily  indebted to the poetics of the Movement, and her seeming obsession with the  writing of "the forefathers" betrays a desire to gain a place in the masculine  literary establishment. However, Wendy Cope's attitude to poetic tradition is  not without ambivalence. This article analyses Cope's use of postmodernist pastiche, and discusses the possible implications of her style from a feminist  point of view.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

ALLOTT, Kenneth. 1962. The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse 1918-1960. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

ALLNUTT, Gillian, Fred D'AGUIAR, Ken EDWARDS, and Eric MOTTRAM, eds. 1988. The New British Poetry: 1968-1988. London: Paladin Grafton Books

BLOOM, Harold. 1973. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford UP.

CAMERON, Deborah, ed. 1990. The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. London: Routledge

COPE, Wendy. 1986. Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis. London: Faber and Faber.

- - -. 1992. Serious Concerns. London: Faber and Faber.

DICKSON, E. Jane. 1992. "Wendy Winds 'Em Up." The Sunday Times March 15: 47.

EAGLETON, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

EDWARDS, Ken. 1988. "Some Younger Poets." In Allnnutt 1988: 265-270.

GILBERT, Sandra M., and Susan GUBAR. 1979. "Introduction: Gender, Creativity and the Woman Poet." In Gilbert and Gubar 1979: xv-xxvi.

- - -, eds. 1979 Shakespeare's Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets. Bloomington: Indiana UP.

GROVE, Valerie. 1992. Interview. Life and Times, March 13 (Friday): 1.

HILL, Geoffrey. 1985. Collected Poems. London: Penguin.

HUGHES, Ted. 1972. Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow. London: Faber and Faber.

JAMESON, Fredric. 1988. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." In Kaplan 1988: 13-29.

KAPLAN, Cora 1986. "Language and Gender" In Cameron, 1990: 57-69.

KAPLAN, E. Ann, ed. 1988. Postmodernism and Its Discontents: Theories, Practices. London and New York: Verso.

KRISTEVA, Julia. 1981. Interview by Xaviere Gautier. In New French Feminisms: An Anthology. Ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf: 165-167.

LARKIN, Philip. 1988. Collected Poems. London and Boston: The Marvell Press / Faber and Faber.

LOCHHEAD, Liz. 1984. Dreaming Frankenstein and Collected Poems. Edinburgh: Polygon Books.

MORRISON, Blake and Andrew Motion. 1982. Introduction to The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

MULFORD, Wendy. 1987. Late Spring Next Year: Poems 1979-1985. Bristol: Loxwood and Stoneleigh.

NICHOLS, Grace. 1984. The Fat Black Woman's Poems. London: Virago.

O'DONOGHUE, Bernard. 1986. "Light Cakes, Thin Ale." Times Literary Supplement. June 6 (Friday): 616.

OSTRIKER, Alicia Suskin. 1986. Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America. London: The Women's Press.

RILEY, Denise. 1985. Dry Air. London: Virago.

Downloads

Published

1994-12-31

Issue

Section

ARTICLES: Literature, film and cultural studies

How to Cite

Pérez Novales, M. (1994). Wendy Cope’s Use of Parody in Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis. Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, 15, 481-500. https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.199411757