
Romantic Interactions
Social Being and the Turns of Literary Action
Susan J. Wolfson(Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Published on 13. December 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
400 pages
978-0-8018-9474-9 (ISBN)
Description
In Romantic Interactions, Susan J. Wolfson examines how interaction with other authors-whether on the bookshelf, in the embodied company of someone else writing, or in relation to literary celebrity-shaped the work of some of the best-known (and less well-known) writers in the English language. Working across the arc of Long Romanticism, from the 1780s to the 1840s, this lively study involves writing by women and men, in poetry and prose. Combining careful readings with sophisticated literary, historical, and cultural criticism, Wolfson reveals how various writers came to define themselves as "author." The story unfolds not only in deft textual analyses but also by provocatively placing writers in dialogue with what they were reading, with one another, and with the community of readers (and writers) their writings helped bring into being: Mary Wollstonecraft and Charlotte Smith in the Revolution-roiled 1790s; William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth in the society of the Lake District; Lord Byron, a magnet for writers everywhere, inspired, troubled, but always arrested by what he (and his scandal-ridden celebrity) represented.
This fresh, informative account of key writers, important texts, and complex cultural currents promises keen interest for students and scholars, literary critics, and cultural historians.
This fresh, informative account of key writers, important texts, and complex cultural currents promises keen interest for students and scholars, literary critics, and cultural historians.
Reviews / Votes
Susan Wolfson is not afraid to profess the study of literature. Her impressive body of work has reasserted the claims of close reading and formal literary values in the face (or the wake) of New Historical and other forms of social, materialist criticism which have tended to reduce poetic texts to the socio-political arguments that can be based on-or against-them. Yet she does this not in simple reaction to what has become a very prevailing trend in the field of Romantic criticism, but with a keen alertness to the moral issues raised in Romantic poetry, especially when they involve the status of women, and particularly women writers, then and now. The present book takes a further step in this direction by investigating poetic language and feminist issues, including the possibly 'feminine' valences of poetry itself. Its procedure is highly intertextual, reading texts back and forth, for and against, each other. New Books on Literature 19 2010 Wolfson employs historicizing criticism to study the relationship between Romantic authors' subjective agency and social connections. Choice 2011More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
15 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder
15 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
650 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-9474-9 (9780801894749)
DOI
10.1353/book.496
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
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Book
12/2010
Johns Hopkins University Press
€95.03
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E-Book
12/2010
Johns Hopkins University Press
€24.99
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Person
Susan J. Wolfson is a professor of English at Princeton University and author of many essays on and editions of Romantic-era writers. Her books include The Questioning Presence; Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism; and, most recently, Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Note on Texts
Introduction: "The will of a social being"
I. Two Women & Poetic Tradition
1. Charlotte Smith's Emigrants and the Politics of Allusion
2. Mary Wollstonecraft: Re:Reading the Poets
3. The Poets' "Wollstonecraft"
II. Gender Interactions, Generative Interactions: Two Wordsworths
4. Lyrical Ballads and the Pregnant Words of Men's Passions
5. William's Sister: Alternatives of Alter Ego
6. Dorothy's Conversation with William
III. A Public Attraction
7. Gazing on "Byron": Separation and Fascination
8. Byron and the Muse of Female Poetry
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Note on Texts
Introduction: "The will of a social being"
I. Two Women & Poetic Tradition
1. Charlotte Smith's Emigrants and the Politics of Allusion
2. Mary Wollstonecraft: Re:Reading the Poets
3. The Poets' "Wollstonecraft"
II. Gender Interactions, Generative Interactions: Two Wordsworths
4. Lyrical Ballads and the Pregnant Words of Men's Passions
5. William's Sister: Alternatives of Alter Ego
6. Dorothy's Conversation with William
III. A Public Attraction
7. Gazing on "Byron": Separation and Fascination
8. Byron and the Muse of Female Poetry
Notes
Works Cited
Index