A feminine enlightenment : British women writers and the philosophy of progress, 1759-1820 / JoEllen DeLucia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

DeLucia, JoEllen, author.

Series:

Edinburgh critical studies in romanticism.

Edinburgh critical studies in romanticism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 208 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Drawing on original archival research, A Feminine Enlightenment argues that women writers shaped Enlightenment conversations regarding the role of sentiment and gender in the civilizing process. By reading women's literature alongside history and philosophy and moving between the eighteenth century and Romantic era, JoEllen DeLucia challenges conventional historical and generic boundaries. Beginning with Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), she tracks discussions of 'women's progress' from the rarified atmosphere of mid-eighteenth-century Bluestocking salons and the masculine domain of the Scottish university system to the popular Minerva Press novels of the early nineteenth century. Ultimately, this study positions feminine genres such as the Gothic romance and Bluestocking poetry, usually seen as outliers in a masculine Age of Reason, as essential to understanding emotion's role in Enlightenment narratives of progress. The effect of this study is twofold: to show how developments in women's literature reflected and engaged with Enlightenment discussions of emotion, sentiment, and commercial and imperial expansion; and to provide new literary and historical contexts for contemporary conversations that continue to use 'women's progress' to assign cultures and societies around the globe a place in universalizing schemas of development. Key Features: * Establishes the centrality of gender to Enlightenment discussions of social and historical development * Uncovers evidence of women writers' participation in the Scottish Enlightenment's theorization of sentiment and historical progress *Provides literary and historical background for ongoing discussions of the history of emotion and the study of affect

Contents:

Introduction: A feminine enlightenment?

The progress of feeling: The Ossian poems and Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments

Ossiania history and Bluestocking feminism

Queering progress: Anna Seward and Llangollen Vale

Poetry, paratext, and history in Radcliffe's gothic

Stadial fiction or the progress of taste

Epilogue: Women writers in the age of Ossian.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 08 Aug 2016).

Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-201) and index.

ISBN:

1-4744-0426-X

1-4744-2315-9

1-4744-0867-2

0-7486-9595-8

OCLC:

1322124603