Feminist Introduction to Romanticism

Elizabeth Fay is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She the author of Becoming Wordsworthian: A Performative Aesthetics (1994) and of Eminent Rhetoric (1994).

"Drawing heavily on the many new historical and feminist interrogations of British romantic texts over the last decade, Elizabeth Fay provides a useful overview of the major areas of feminist enquiry into canonical and non-canonical romantic writing. Fay provides several fresh insights into non-canonical texts as well as helpful classifications of the range of women's writing in the romantic period." Studies in Romanticism

• List of Illustrations. List of Women Writers Discussed.1 A Feminist Approach to Romantic Studies and the Case of Austen.Standard Definitions and Revisions.The Historical Period.Feminist Theory and Romantic Studies.Jane Austen, a Case Study.2 Women and Politics: Writing Revolution.Letters and the Maternal: Political Metaphors.Revolution as a Frame of Mind.Revolutionary Writing.Maternal Nationalism and Children's Literature.3 Women and the Gothic: Literature as Home Politics.Defining the Gothic.The Gothic as Domestic: Social Critique Gothics.Psychological Drama Gothics.The Romance of Real Life and the Radical Critique.4 Women and Thought: Intellectual Critique.The Bluestocking Circle in London.Dissent and the Rights of the Home.Women and History.Literary Criticism as Art.Intellectuality and the Years of Reaction.5 Women and Identity: Visuality in Romantic Texts.Seeing and Seen: The Writer and the Proper Lady.Display and the Specular Heroine.Tableaux Vivants, Theatrics and Burney's The Wanderer.Conclusion.Bibliography.Index.