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This is the first study to reconstruct the political origins of English women's poetry between the execution of Charles I and the death of Queen Anne. Carol Barash's book shows that, between Katherine Philips (1632-64) and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), an English women's poetic tradition developed as a part of the larger political shifts in these years, and particularly in women writers' fascination with the figure of the female monarch. Writers discussed include Aphra Behn, Katherine Philips, Anne Killigrew, Jane Barker, and Anne Finch. Based on extensive archival research in England and the United States, English Women's Poetry, 1649-1714 argues that ideas about women's voices and women's communities were crucial to the shaping of an English national literature after the civil wars. Women enter print culture - as poets and as women - by situating their writing in defence of embattled monarchy. Women poets are especially fascinated with the figure of the female monarch (both real and mythic). Their sense of poetic legitimacy derives from the communities they generate around figures of female authority, particularly James II's second wife, Mary of Modena, and later Queen Anne.
This work investigates how seventeenth and eighteenth-century English women poets utilized the figure of the female monarch to establish their own linguistic authority and political identity within a post-civil war society. Carol Barash, a scholar of early modern literature, draws upon extensive archival research to demonstrate that women writers were not peripheral to the development of English national literature but were central to its formation. By analyzing the works of poets such as Aphra Behn and Anne Finch, Barash argues that these women constructed poetic legitimacy by aligning their voices with the defense of embattled monarchy and the creation of female-centered communities.
What You Will Find
Scholars and critics recognize this text as a foundational study for understanding the political dimensions of early modern women's writing. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which provides a rigorous re-evaluation of the canon by centering women's voices in the development of national literature.
Page Count:
368
Publication Date:
2000-03-16
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
019818686X
ISBN-13:
9780198186861
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