The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women's Poetry (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Cambridge University Press, 3/14/2019
EAN 9781316633571, ISBN10: 1316633578

Paperback, 332 pages, 22.7 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English

The Victorian period has a strong tradition of poetry written by women. In this Companion, leading scholars deliver accessible and cutting-edge essays that situate Victorian women's poetry in its relation to print culture, diverse identities, and aesthetic and cultural issues. The book is inclusive in method, demonstrating, for example, the benefits of both distant and close reading approaches, and featuring major figures like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti and over one hundred poets altogether. Thematically arranged, the chapters deliver studies on a comprehensive array of subjects that address women's poetry in its manifold forms and investigate its global context. Essays shed light on children's poetry, domestic relations, sexualities, and stylistic artifice and conclude by looking at how women poets placed their published poems and how we can 'place' Victorian women poets today.

List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgments
Chronology of publications and events, compiled by Sofia Prado Huggins
1. Introduction Linda K. Hughes
Part I. Form and the Senses
2. Genres Monique R. Morgan
3. Prosody Meredith Martin
4. Haunted by voice Elizabeth Helsinger
5. Floating worlds
wood engraving and women's poetry Lorraine Janzen Kooistra
6. Embodiment and touch Jason R. Rudy
Part II. Women's Poetry in the World
7. Publishing and reception Alexis Easley
8. Transatlanticism, transnationality, and cosmopolitanism Alison Chapman
9. Dialect, region, class, work Kirstie Blair
10. Politics, protest, interventions
beyond a poetess tradition Marjorie Stone
11. Religion and spirituality Charles Laporte
Part III. Nurturance and Contested Naturalness
12. Children's poetry Laurie Langbauer and Beverly Taylor
13. Marriage, motherhood, and domesticity Emily Harrington
14. Sexuality Jill Ehnenn
15. Poets of style
poetries of asceticism and excess Ana Parejo Vadillo
Part IV. Reading Victorian Women's Poetry
16. Distant reading and Victorian women's poetry Natalie M. Houston
Afterword. Nineteenth-century women's poetry in the field of vision Isobel Armstrong
Further reading
Appendix. Poets' biographies.