Title: Borderlines : the shiftings of gender in British romanticism /
Authors: Wolfson, Susan J., 1948-
Publisher: Stanford University Press,
Year: 2006
Subjects: English literature History and criticism; Romanticism Great Britain; Sex role in literature.
Abstract: "Opening with the revolution-era debates of the 1790s, Borderlines reads Romantic genders across a mobile syntax, tuned to such figures as the stylized "feminine" poetess, the aberrant "masculine" woman, male poets deemed "feminine" or "unmanly," the campy male "effeminate," and hapless or strategic cross-dressers of both sexes. With fresh readings of the works, careers, and volatile receptions of Mary Wollstonecraft, Felicia Hemans, M.J. Jewsbury, Lord Byron, and John Keats, Susan Wolfson shows how senses (and sensations) of gender shape and get shaped by sign systems that prove arbitrary, fluid, and susceptible of lively transformation."--Publisher's website.
Contents: On the borderlines of gendered language -- Felicia Hemans and the stages of "the feminine" -- The generations of "masculine" woman -- Woman's life and "masculine" energy : the history of Maria Jane Jewsbury -- Lord Byron, Sardanapalus, and "effeminate character" -- Gender as cross-dressing in Don Juan : men & women, male & female, masculine & feminine -- Keats and gender acts : "had I man's fair form" -- Gendering Keats : "the character undecided, the way of life uncertain" -- Sex in souls?