Jacqueline de Weever (born 1932) is a Guyanese-born literary scholar and poet. She is Professor Emerita at
Brooklyn College,
City University of New York.
Life
Jacqueline de Weever was born in
Georgetown, British Guiana
Georgetown is the capital and largest city of Guyana. It is situated in Demerara-Mahaica, region 4, on the Atlantic Ocean coast, at the mouth of the Demerara River. It is nicknamed the "Garden City of the Caribbean." It is the retail, administr ...
. She is the niece of the poet
A. J. Seymour
Arthur James Seymour (12 January 1914 – 25 December 1989), or A. J. Seymour, was a Guyanese poet, essayist, memoirist, and founding editor of the literary journal '' Kyk-Over-Al''.
Biography
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana, to James Tudor ...
. De Weever was educated in Georgetown and in
New York. She gained her PhD at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
in 1971, with a thesis entitled 'A Biographical Dictionary of Proper Names in Chaucer'. She went on to teach
medieval English literature for 25 years at Brooklyn College. She lives in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
.
''Sheba's Daughters'' (1998) combined "the concepts of medieval
rhetorical
Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...
treatises with the perspectives of
post-colonial
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...
criticism", to examine how
Saracen
upright 1.5, Late 15th-century German woodcut depicting Saracens
Saracen ( ) was a term used in the early centuries, both in Greek and Latin writings, to refer to the people who lived in and near what was designated by the Romans as Arabia Pe ...
women were portrayed in
medieval French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligi ...
epic poetry
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
of the 12th and 13th centuries.
De Weever has also written poetry, which has appeared in ''Blue Unicorn'', ''The Homestead Review'', ''Iodine'', ''Tiger's Eye'', and ''Vanitas''. A 2019 poetry collection, ''Trailing the Sun's Sweat'', was written in response to Cecil Jane's translation of ''
The Journal of Christopher Columbus''.
Works
* ''The Bamboo Flute and Other Stories''. 1979.
* ''A Dictionary of Classical, Mythological and Sideral Names in the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer''. University of Pennsylvania, 1983.
* ''Mythmaking and Metaphor in Black Women's Fiction''. 1992.
* ''Chaucer Name Dictionary: A Guide to Astrological, Biblical, Historical, Literary, and Mythological Names in the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer''. New York: Garland, 1996.
* ''Sheba's Daughters: Whitening & Demonizing the Saracen Woman in Medieval French Epic''. New York: Garland, 1998.
* ''Aesop and the Imprint of Medieval Thought: A Study of Six Fables as Translated at the End of the Middle Ages''. 2010.
* ''Rice-Wine Ghosts''. The Poet's Press, 2017.
* ''Trailing the Sun's Sweat''. The Poet's Press, 2019.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weever, Jacqueline de
1932 births
Living people
People from Georgetown, Guyana
Brooklyn College faculty
Guyanese academics
English literature academics