Romanticism and Women Poets

by Linkin, Harriet Kramer; Behrendt, Stephen C.

• ISBN13: 9780813121079
• ISBN10: 0813121078
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-25
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky

Summary

" One of the most exciting developments in Romantic studies in the past decade has been the rediscovery and repositioning of women poets as vital and influential members of the Romantic literary community. This is the first volume to focus on women poets of this era and to consider how their historical reception challenges current conceptions of Romanticism. With a broad, revisionist view, the essays examine the poetry these women produced, what the poets thought about themselves and their place in the contemporary literary scene, and what the recovery of their works says about current and past theoretical frameworks. The contributors focus their attention on such poets as Felicia Hemans, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Charlotte Smith, Anna Barbauld, Mary Lamb, and Fanny Kemble and argue for a significant rethinking of Romanticism as an intellectual and cultural phenomenon. Grounding their consideration of the poets in cultural, social, intellectual, and aesthetic concerns, the authors contest the received wisdom about Romantic poetry, its authors, its themes, and its audiences. Some of the essays examine the ways in which many of the poets sought to establish stable positions and identities for themselves, while others address the changing nature over time of the reputations of these women poets.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii	(1)
Acknowledgments	viii
Introduction: Recovering Romanticism and Women Poets	1	(14)
Harriet Kramer Linkin
Stephen C. Behrendt
Prologue Endurance and Forgetting: What the Evidence Suggests	15	(10)
Paula R. Feldman
Part One: Questioning Reception	25	(76)
The Gap That Is Not a Gap: British Poetry by Women, 1802-1812	25	(21)
Stephen C. Behrendt
The Subject of Violence: Mary Lamb, Femme Fatale	46	(25)
Adriana Craciun
"Tales of Truth?": Amelia Opie's Antislavery Poetics	71	(30)
Roxanne Eberle
Part Two: Anticipating Reception	101	(64)
"Dost thou not know my voice?": Charlotte Smith and the Lyric's Audience	101	(24)
Sarah M. Zimmerman
"Be Good!": Acting, Reader's Theater, and Oratory in Frances Anne Kemble's Writing	125	(19)
Catherine B. Burroughs
Recuperating Romanticism in Mary Tighe's Psyche	144	(21)
Harriet Kramer Linkin
Part Three: Reconstructing Reception	165	(95)
A "High-Minded Christian Lady": The Posthumous Reception of Anna Letitia Barbauld	165	(27)
William McCarthy
"Burst Are the Prison Bars": Caroline Bowles Southey and the Vicissitudes of Poetic Reputation	192	(22)
Kathleen Hickok
Felicia Hemans and the Revolving Doors of Reception	214	(28)
Susan Wolfson
Receiving the Legend, Rethinking the Writer: Letitia Landon and the Poetess Tradition	242	(18)
Tricia Lootens
Works Cited	260	(25)
Contributors	285	(2)
Index	287