Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre
“Our sense of eighteenth-century poetic territory is immeasurably expanded by [this] excellent historical and cultural” study of UK women poets of the era (Cynthia Wall, Studies in English Literature).

This major work offers a broad view of the writing and careers of eighteenth-century women poets, casting new light on the ways in which poetry was read and enjoyed, on changing poetic tastes in British culture, and on the development of many major poetic genres and traditions.

Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Paula R. Backscheider explores the forms in which women wrote and the uses to which they put those forms. Considering more than forty women in relation to canonical male writers of the same era, she concludes that women wrote in all of the genres that men did but often adapted, revised, and even created new poetic kinds from traditional forms.

Backscheider demonstrates that knowledge of these women’s poetry is necessary for an accurate and nuanced literary history. Within chapters on important verse forms, she sheds light on such topics as women’s use of religious poetry to express ideas about patriarchy and rape; the important role of friendship poetry; same-sex desire in elegy by women as well as by men; and the status of Charlotte Smith as a key figure of the long eighteenth century, not only as a Romantic-era poet.

Co-Winner, James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association
"1111259962"
Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre
“Our sense of eighteenth-century poetic territory is immeasurably expanded by [this] excellent historical and cultural” study of UK women poets of the era (Cynthia Wall, Studies in English Literature).

This major work offers a broad view of the writing and careers of eighteenth-century women poets, casting new light on the ways in which poetry was read and enjoyed, on changing poetic tastes in British culture, and on the development of many major poetic genres and traditions.

Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Paula R. Backscheider explores the forms in which women wrote and the uses to which they put those forms. Considering more than forty women in relation to canonical male writers of the same era, she concludes that women wrote in all of the genres that men did but often adapted, revised, and even created new poetic kinds from traditional forms.

Backscheider demonstrates that knowledge of these women’s poetry is necessary for an accurate and nuanced literary history. Within chapters on important verse forms, she sheds light on such topics as women’s use of religious poetry to express ideas about patriarchy and rape; the important role of friendship poetry; same-sex desire in elegy by women as well as by men; and the status of Charlotte Smith as a key figure of the long eighteenth century, not only as a Romantic-era poet.

Co-Winner, James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association
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Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre

Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre

by Paula R. Backscheider
Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre

Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre

by Paula R. Backscheider

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Overview

“Our sense of eighteenth-century poetic territory is immeasurably expanded by [this] excellent historical and cultural” study of UK women poets of the era (Cynthia Wall, Studies in English Literature).

This major work offers a broad view of the writing and careers of eighteenth-century women poets, casting new light on the ways in which poetry was read and enjoyed, on changing poetic tastes in British culture, and on the development of many major poetic genres and traditions.

Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Paula R. Backscheider explores the forms in which women wrote and the uses to which they put those forms. Considering more than forty women in relation to canonical male writers of the same era, she concludes that women wrote in all of the genres that men did but often adapted, revised, and even created new poetic kinds from traditional forms.

Backscheider demonstrates that knowledge of these women’s poetry is necessary for an accurate and nuanced literary history. Within chapters on important verse forms, she sheds light on such topics as women’s use of religious poetry to express ideas about patriarchy and rape; the important role of friendship poetry; same-sex desire in elegy by women as well as by men; and the status of Charlotte Smith as a key figure of the long eighteenth century, not only as a Romantic-era poet.

Co-Winner, James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780801895906
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 02/03/2022
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 747
File size: 3 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Paula R. Backscheider is the Philpott-Stevens Eminent Scholar in the Department of English at Auburn University. She is the author of several books, including Daniel Defoe: His Life,Spectacular Politics: Theatrical Power and Mass Culture in Early Modern England, and Reflections on Biography, and editor of Revising Women: Eighteenth-Century "Women's Fiction" and Social Engagement.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Plan of the Book
Approaching the Poetry
The Chapters
1. Introduction
Changing Contexts
Systems, Gender, and Persistent Issues
Agency and the ''Marked Marker''
2. Anne Finch and What Women Wrote
The Social and the Formal
Anne Finch and Popular Poetry
Poetry on Poetry
The Spleen as Legacy
3. Women and Poetry in the Public Eye
Poetry as News and Critique
The Woman Question
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
4. Hymns, Narratives, and Innovations in Religious Poetry
The Voice of Paraphrase
The Hymn as Personal Lyric
Religious Poetry as Subversive Narrative
Devout Soliloquies
5. Friendship Poems
The Legacy of Katherine Philips
Encouragement and the Counteruniverse
Jane Brereton
Adaptation and Ideology
6. Retirement Poetry
Beyond Convention
Memory, Time, and Elizabeth Carter
Reflection and Difference
7. The Elegy
What Did Women Write?
Representative Composers: Darwall and Seward
The Elegy and Same-Sex Desire
Entertainment and Forgetting
8. The Sonnet, Charlotte Smith, and What Women Wrote
The Sonnet and the Political
Sonnet Sequences
Women Poets and the Spread of the Sonnet
The Emigrants, Conversations, and Beachy Head
Smith as Transitional Poet
9. Conclusion
Biographies of the Poets
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Charles Haskell Hinnant

An ambitious and pioneering work of archeological excavation, one that will establish a foundation for the future study of eighteenth-century women poets and their poetry. A major contribution.

Charles Haskell Hinnant, University of Missouri–Columbia

From the Publisher

An ambitious and pioneering work of archeological excavation, one that will establish a foundation for the future study of eighteenth-century women poets and their poetry. A major contribution.
—Charles Haskell Hinnant, University of Missouri–Columbia

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