Romanticism and Feminism (A Midland Book)

Description

This volume of essays, together with the recent books of Mary Poovey, Mary Jacobus, and Margaret Homans, 1 marks the coining of age of a feminist criticism of the major texts of the English Romantic period. · These essays developed out of the first sessions of the Modern Language Association Convention devoted entirely to the problem of the English Romantic poets and women, the sessions presented in December 1985 under the auspices of the Late Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Divisions as well as the Wordsworth/Coleridge Association and the Byron Society. This origin explains both the variety of theoretical approaches and the absence of essays on such major Romantic figures as Blake, Coleridge, and Percy Shelley. One might argue, however, that the writers discussed here William and Dorothy wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Scott, wollstonecraft, Mary Lamb, Mary Shelley-are central to any discussion of the problem of gender in English Romantic writing and criticism, since the particularly prominent status of their work helped construct even as it represented their society's attitudes toward sexual difference. CONTENTS ON ROMANTICISM AND FEMINISM Silencing the Female ROMANTICISM AND THE COLONIZATION OFTHE FEMININE ROMANTIC QUEST AND CONQUEST THE CULT OF DOMESTICITY Writing the Female HARASSING THE MUSE THE WRITER'S RAVISHMENT WOMEN IN SCOTT'S NARRATIVE POETRY The Women Respond INDIVIDUAL IN COMMUNITY "ON NEEDLE-WORK" ROMANTIC POETRY AN EARLY ROMANCE POSSESSING NATURE CONTRIBUTORS INDEX