‘Michael field, the two-headed nightingale': lesbian text as palimpsest

Abstract

Abstract The poetry produced by the two British women who lived and wrote together in the late nineteenth century under the joint pseudonym ‘Michael Field’ has been regarded as a univocal product by its admirers and detractors alike. Yet such a reading of their work, although encouraged by the authors themselves, tends to homogenise it and disguise the much more dynamic dialogic structure that sustains it. This structure stems from the real differences between the two poets, which have always been played down in an attempt to deflect attention from the dynamic nature of their lesbian relationship