Laurie A. Wilson (Biola University)
Scholars of French and English literature have recognized that the sibyl served as a symbol during the Romantic period for women authors who sought to break into the male dominated literary tradition (Hoog 1991, Lewis 2003). This paper employs depictions of the sibyl in Latin poetry as a framework for considering the sibyl’s reception in the fiction of four prominent women authors. Although each of the women blended the classical sibyls together in different ways and emphasized particular aspects of their identities, this paper argues that the Virgilian sibyl provided the essential and preeminent archetype for legitimizing the female voice.
The sibyl has a significant role in the poetry of Tibullus’ Elegies, Virgil’s Aeneid and Eclogue 4, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Silius Italicus’ Punica. Together, these authors construct an image of the poetic sibyl and her attributes of age, wisdom, authority, and virginity. As one possessing supernatural knowledge and influence, the sibyl guides a Roman leader who beseeches her aid. A key divide occurs, however, between the depictions of the sibyl in Virgil and Ovid. While Virgil focuses on the sibyl’s prophetic insight and her guidance of Aeneas (Gowers 2005), Ovid focuses on the erotic appeal of her body and her victimization by Apollo (Papaioannou 2005). Rather than aligning with Ovid’s interpretation, the shorter accounts in Tibullus and Silius mirror Virgil’s characterization of the sibyl and in some instances even heighten it.
Authors have long appropriated the sibyl as a symbol of poetic inspiration. Virgil himself refashioned vates as a laudatory term for a poet possessed by the divine voice and used it in reference to himself (Winkler 1987). Throughout later centuries, the sibyl continued to provide a symbol for female leadership, especially in religion (Houghton 2019). During the English Renaissance, male authors employed the sibyl in defense of poetry as a divine art (Malay 2010). This enduring tradition provided a ready-made means of legitimizing the female voice in the Romantic period when women authors faced discrimination and struggled to achieve public recognition of their work. Madame Germaine de Staël initiated this use of the sibyl in her novel Corinne ou l’Italie (1807), which describes the eponymous heroine as a prêtresse d'Apollon and la sibylla triomphante. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), George Sand’s The Countess Von Rudolstadt (1843), and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1856) followed de Staël’s lead. These four authors had differing levels of classical knowledge and constructed their own conceptions of the sibyl. Variations appear, for instance, in de Staël’s inclusion of the sibyl’s physical beauty, Shelley and Sand’s focus on the sibyl’s age, and Browning’s emphasis on the sibyl as a wise teacher. Nevertheless, they all connected a woman’s independent reason, genius, and artistic creativity with the figure of the sibyl. In particular, the symbolism of the Virgilian sibyl, as a female vates, sacerdos, and dux with divine inspiration and authority in guiding men, empowered these women authors by giving them a model for themselves and vindicating the value of their work to others.