The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy: IB Guide

In these slides, I provide the grounding work to reading and analysing Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry collection, The World’s Wife. This resource can be used by English and Literature students and teachers in the IB Diploma program. Notably, I focus on the background of Duffy and its implication on her writings and feminist perspectives. The resource also delves on subversive feminism and counterfactuals, and how these theoretical areas enable Duffy to contest and challenge gendered norms, and critique the place and role of women in myths, legends, history and fiction.

Also included in this work is Duffy’s technique as a poet in this collections. Styles such as allusion, counterfactualising, narration, vivid description, satire and humour, and their effect in subversion of gendered norms are elaborated.