Women's Poetry in the Enlightenment: The Making of a Canon, 1730-1820

by Isobel Armstrong (Editor), Virginia Blain (Editor)

Overview

This collection of twelve critical essays on women's poetry of the eighteenth century and enlightenment is the first to range widely over individual poets and to undertake a comprehensive exploration of their work. Experiment with genre and form, the poetics of the body, the politics of gender, revolutionary critique, and patronage, are themes of the collection, which includes discussions of the distinctive projects of Mary Leapor, Ann Yearsley, Helen Maria Williams, Joanna Baillie, Charlotte Smith, Anna Barbauld and Lucy Aikin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349270262
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/1999
Edition description:	1st ed. 1999
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

STUART CURRAN Vartan Gregorian Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania MARGARET ANN DOODY Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and Professor of English, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee ELIZABETH EGER Research Student, King's College, Cambridge MAGGIE FAVRETTI teaches at Scarsdale High School, New York City LISA A. FREEMAN Assistant Professor, University of Illinois, Chicago ISOBEL GRUNDY Henry Marshall Tory Professor, English Department, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada JUDITH HAWLEY Lecturer in English, Royal Holloway, University of London ANNE MELLOR Professor of English and Women's Studies, UCLA ROGER SALES Professor of English Literature, School of English and American Studies, University of East Anglia and also Dean of the School DAVID E. SHOTTLETON Lecturer, English Department, University of Wales, Aberystwyth MARY WALDRON lectures part-time for the Department of Continuing Education, University of Essex.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors Introduction; I.Armstrong & V.Blain PART ONE: THE SENSUOUS EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: MINDS AND BODIES Sensuousness in the Poetry of Eighteenth-Century Women Poets; M.A.Doody All Passion Extinguish'd: The Case of Mary Chandler (1687-1745); D.Shuttleton 'A Dialogue': Elizabeth Carter's Passion for the Female Mind; L.A.Freeman PART TWO: THE FEMINIST POLITICAL PROJECT Mary Seymour Montague: Anonymity and 'Old Satirical Codes'; I.Grundy The Female Poet and the Poetess: Two Traditions of British Women's Poetry 1780-1830; A.K.Mellor The Politics of Vision: Anna Barbauld's 'Eighteen Hundred and Eleven'; M.Favretti PART THREE: PROTEST AND PATRONAGE 'This Muse-born Wonder': the Occluded Voice of Ann Yearsley, Milkwoman and Poet of Clifton; M.Waldron The Maid and the Minister's Wife: Literary Philanthropy in Regency York; R.Sales PART FOUR: REMAKING GENRES AND SUBJECTIVITIES Romantic Women Poets: Inscribing the Self; S.Curran Homosocial Women: Martha Sansom, Constantia Grierson, Mary Leapor and Georgic Verse Epistle; K.Lilley Charlotte Smith's Elegaic Sonnets : Losses and Gains; J.Hawley PART FIVE: FINALE - A FEMALE CANON? Fashioning a Female Canon: Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and the Politics of the Anthology; E.Eger Index

Editorial Reviews

'...in Women's Poetry in the Enlightenment the variety of subject and approach are a strength. The essays...add much to our understanding of the distinctive nature of women's writing.' - Lisa Vargo, Romanticism

'A stimulating collection of essays.' - British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin and Review

From the Publisher

A dozen critical essays affirm the significance of women's poetry of the late Enlightenment and early Romantic periods. Counter to the conventional wisdom, poets such as Mary Leapor, Ann Yearsley, Helen Marie Williams, Joanna Baillie, and Charlotte Smith are shown to have been as adventuresome in "the sensuous 18th century" as their male counterparts in terms of subject matter, style, political agenda, and remaking genres: adding up to a female canon with what Barbauld termed the "well thought philosophic mind." ("The Mouse Petition") Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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