Women Writers and the English Nation in the 1790s: Romantic Belongings (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)
Cambridge University Press, 1/25/2001
EAN 9780521773423, ISBN10: 0521773423
Hardcover, 216 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English
Angela Keane addresses the work of five women writers of the 1790s and its problematic relationship with the canon of Romantic literature. Refining arguments that women's writing has been overlooked, Keane examines the more complex underpinnings and exclusionary effects of the English national literary tradition. The book explores the negotiations of literate, middle-class women such as Hannah More, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Helen Maria Williams and Ann Radcliffe with emergent ideas of national literary representation. As women were cast into the feminine, maternal role in Romantic national discourse, women like these who defined themselves in other terms found themselves exiled - sometimes literally - from the nation. These wandering women did not rest easily in the family-romance of Romantic nationalism nor could they be reconciled with the models of literary authorship that emerged in the 1790s.
1. Introduction
romantic belongings
2. Domesticating the sublime
Ann Radcliffe and Gothic dissent
3. Forgotten sentiments
Helen Maria Williams's Letters from France
4. Exiles and emigrés
the wanderings of Charlotte Smith
5. Mary Wollstonecraft and the national body
6. Patrician, populist and patriot
Hannah More's counter-revolutionary nationalism
Afterword.
'This well-written and informative book is a valuable contribution to the growing number of studies on the book of Revelation.' Evangelical Quarterly