Women's Poetry: 2011 (original) (raw)

2013, Abo Interactive Journal For Women in the Arts 1640 1830

Turn of the Century Women's Poetry: Skirting the Problems of Periodization

This essay proposes a paradigm shift in the way we analyze late-nineteenth century women's poetry. The ongoing recovery of late-Victorian women poets has both enabled and invigorated the study of women's poetry, and to accommodate and understand these new voices, scholars have offered two major conceptual categories: " female aesthetes " and " new woman poets. " These models have proved useful but the more scholars have worked with them, the more they have seen the need for additional or alternate descriptive categories. Addressing periodization and arguing that it is especially problematic in regard to late-century women poets, this essay proposes a new period category—turn of the century women's poetry—wedded to a new formalist approach. This reconceptualization has multiple benefits: an alternative for theorizing women's poetry that does not depend on the domestic/poetess model; a non-deterministic period category that does not smooth over contradictions and oppositions; a frame for the recovered voices of women poets that accommodates their differences while accounting for their coherence; and a vision that looks both to the past and toward the future for a clearer picture of women's poetic production.(1) In order to establish the value of looking toward the Edwardian era when interpreting the social and institutional forms represented in turn of the century women's poetry, the essay outlines some post-1900 forms and contexts that both emerge from and provide critical frames of reference for poems of the earlier period. The essay offers readings of poems by Dollie Radford and Edith Nesbit to illustrate the ways in which current critical categories fail many women's poems, and closes with a discussion of works by Alice Meynell, May Kendall, and A. Mary F. Robinson that demonstrate the value of looking both forward and back when interpreting turn of the century women's poetry.

Teaching the Long Poem by Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers

Introduction to a round table of essays about teaching long poems by nineteenth-century British women writers. The papers by Kari Lokke, Stephen Behrendt, Donelle Ruwe, and Florence Boos discuss poets and writers including Charlotte Smith, L.E.L., Caroline Bowles, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Amy Levy among others. The full round table of essays can be found in Pedagogy, Volume 16, Issue 2, April 2016.

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.