Style, gender, and fantasy in nineteenth-century American women's writing
By: Dorri Beam
Series: Cambridge studies in American literature and culture -- 160
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9780521769686
Description: "Dorri Beam presents an important contribution to nineteenth-century fiction by examining how and why a florid and sensuous style came to be adopted by so many authors. Discussing a diverse range of authors, including Margaret Fuller and Pauline Hopkins, Beam traces this style through a variety of literary endeavors and reconstructs the political rationale behind the writers' commitments to this form of prose. Beam provides both close readings of a number of familiar and unfamiliar works and an overarching account of the importance of this form of writing, suggesting new ways of looking at how gender determines literary style. Style, Gender, and Fantasy in Nineteenth Century American Women's Writing redefines our understanding of women's relation to aesthetics and their contribution to both American literary romanticism and feminist reform. This illuminating account provides valuable new insights for scholars of American literature and women's writing"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction: Highly wrought style; 1. Florid fantasies: Fuller, Stephens and the 'other' language of flowers; 2. Sensing the soul: mesmerism, feminism, and highly wrought writing; 3. Harriet Prescott Spofford's Philosophy of Composition; 4. Pauline Hopkins' Baroque Folds: the styled form of Winona; 5. Coda: the value of ornament: Gilman and Wharton; Endnotes; Bibliography.