Deborah Heller – författare

Bringing together top specialists in the field, this edited volume challenges the theory that the eighteenth-century British intellectual women known as the Bluestockings were an isolated phenomenon spanning the period from the 1750s through the 1790s. On the contrary, the contributors suggest, the Bluestockings can be conceptualized as belonging to a chain of interconnected networks, taking their origin at a threshold moment in print media and communications development and extending into the present. The collection begins with a definition of the Bluestockings as a social role rather than a fixed group, a movement rather than a static phenomenon, an evolving dynamic reaching into our late-modern era. Essays include a rare transcript of a Bluestocking conversation; new, previously unknown Bluestockings brought to light for the first time; and descriptions of Bluestocking activity in the realms of natural history, arts and crafts, theatre, industry, travel, and international connections. The concluding essay argues that the Blues reimagined and practiced women’s work in ways that adapted to and altered the course of modernity, decisively putting a female imprint on economic, social, and cultural modernization. Demonstrating how the role of the Bluestocking has evolved through different historical configurations yet has structurally remained the same, the collection traces the influence of the Blues on the Romantic Period through the nineteenth century and proposes the reinvention of Bluestocking practice in the present.

"The image of the Jew in English literature, as in the Western imagination, has at its base the figure of the Christ-killer. All representations of the Jew in Christian culture are constructed in the light of this irreducible definition." -- from the introduction In a collection of insightful critical essays, Derek Cohen, Deborah Heller, and the contributing authors explore the different ways in which writers of English literature have amplified, varied, or denied this archetypical perception. While the authors approach this subject from diverse perspectives, the essays are unified by an awareness of the common tradition out of which representations of Jews have developed and illustrate the tradition''s continuity and modifications. Studying the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Joyce, and a selection of texts from the ninth to the sixteenth century, the essays show how constructs of Jewishness fit into a writer''s pre-existing concerns and patterns of representation and how even later, more favourable depictions are over-simplified reactions to this attitude. Some of the authors directly address the question of what constitutes anti-semitism in a literary work. All take into account the social and historical contexts in which the individual works took shape. Their main concern, however, is not to produce a social history but to illustrate how even the greatest writers draw on stereotypes embedded in the popular imagination and to focus on the internal dynamics of individual works, thereby recuperating classical portrayals within a contemporary critical perspective.

Building on scholarship, such as feminist criticism, that has contributed to an awareness of the distinctive perspectives on female experience revealed in women''s writing, Heller reveals how women authors construct their female protagonists'' quests for creative self-expression. By situating these narrative journeys in their own times and cultures, Literary Sisterhoods shows how they contribute to a common tradition that speaks to readers today.

Bringing together top specialists in the field, this edited volume challenges the theory that the eighteenth-century British intellectual women known as the Bluestockings were an isolated phenomenon spanning the period from the 1750s through the 1790s. On the contrary, the contributors suggest, the Bluestockings can be conceptualized as belonging to a chain of interconnected networks, taking their origin at a threshold moment in print media and communications development and extending into the present. The collection begins with a definition of the Bluestockings as a social role rather than a fixed group, a movement rather than a static phenomenon, an evolving dynamic reaching into our late-modern era. Essays include a rare transcript of a Bluestocking conversation; new, previously unknown Bluestockings brought to light for the first time; and descriptions of Bluestocking activity in the realms of natural history, arts and crafts, theatre, industry, travel, and international connections. The concluding essay argues that the Blues reimagined and practiced women’s work in ways that adapted to and altered the course of modernity, decisively putting a female imprint on economic, social, and cultural modernization. Demonstrating how the role of the Bluestocking has evolved through different historical configurations yet has structurally remained the same, the collection traces the influence of the Blues on the Romantic Period through the nineteenth century and proposes the reinvention of Bluestocking practice in the present.

Bringing together top specialists in the field, this edited volume challenges the theory that the eighteenth-century British intellectual women known as the Bluestockings were an isolated phenomenon spanning the period from the 1750s through the 1790s. On the contrary, the contributors suggest, the Bluestockings can be conceptualized as belonging to a chain of interconnected networks, taking their origin at a threshold moment in print media and communications development and extending into the present. The collection begins with a definition of the Bluestockings as a social role rather than a fixed group, a movement rather than a static phenomenon, an evolving dynamic reaching into our late-modern era. Essays include a rare transcript of a Bluestocking conversation; new, previously unknown Bluestockings brought to light for the first time; and descriptions of Bluestocking activity in the realms of natural history, arts and crafts, theatre, industry, travel, and international connections. The concluding essay argues that the Blues reimagined and practiced women’s work in ways that adapted to and altered the course of modernity, decisively putting a female imprint on economic, social, and cultural modernization. Demonstrating how the role of the Bluestocking has evolved through different historical configurations yet has structurally remained the same, the collection traces the influence of the Blues on the Romantic Period through the nineteenth century and proposes the reinvention of Bluestocking practice in the present.

Bringing together top specialists in the field, this edited volume challenges the theory that the eighteenth-century British intellectual women known as the Bluestockings were an isolated phenomenon spanning the period from the 1750s through the 1790s. On the contrary, the contributors suggest, the Bluestockings can be conceptualized as belonging to a chain of interconnected networks, taking their origin at a threshold moment in print media and communications development and extending into the present. The collection begins with a definition of the Bluestockings as a social role rather than a fixed group, a movement rather than a static phenomenon, an evolving dynamic reaching into our late-modern era. Essays include a rare transcript of a Bluestocking conversation; new, previously unknown Bluestockings brought to light for the first time; and descriptions of Bluestocking activity in the realms of natural history, arts and crafts, theatre, industry, travel, and international connections. The concluding essay argues that the Blues reimagined and practiced women’s work in ways that adapted to and altered the course of modernity, decisively putting a female imprint on economic, social, and cultural modernization. Demonstrating how the role of the Bluestocking has evolved through different historical configurations yet has structurally remained the same, the collection traces the influence of the Blues on the Romantic Period through the nineteenth century and proposes the reinvention of Bluestocking practice in the present.