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1 results

  • Chapter 1 - Becoming ‘Michael Field’

  • from Part I - Works and Days
  • Edited by Sarah Parker, Loughborough University
  • Book:
    Michael Field in Context
    Published online:
    03 October 2025
    Print publication:
    25 September 2025, pp 3-11

  • Summary

    This chapter argues that Michael Field was not just a pseudonym but also an imaginative construct that enabled Bradley and Cooper’s poetic output. It is productive to compare the Michael Field persona to poetry: both are creative genres with specific formal properties and communicative modes. Bradley and Cooper revised inherited literary forms in their reimagined verse dramas, sonnets, masques, and Elizabethan-style songs. Similarly, Bradley and Cooper remake inherited identity categories and reform subjectivity in creating a masculine singular avatar. Playing with form is a way for Bradley and Cooper to express what they think and feel, as well as who they are. This chapter addresses why Bradley and Cooper created an alternate artistic identity, how their pseudonyms evolved to become Michael Field, and the ways in which understanding Bradley and Cooper’s carefully constructed poetic persona can help scholars and readers understand their ideas about gender, sex, art, identity, and autonomy.