Reviews
Susan Wolfson is not afraid to profess the study of literature. Her impressive body of work has reasserted the claims of close reading and formal literary values in the face (or the wake) of New Historical and other forms of social, materialist criticism which have tended to reduce poetic texts to the socio-political arguments that can be based on—or against—them. Yet she does this not in simple reaction to what has become a very prevailing trend in the field of Romantic criticism, but with a keen alertness to the moral issues raised in Romantic poetry, especially when they involve the status of women, and particularly women writers, then and now. The present book takes a further step in this direction by investigating poetic language and feminist issues, including the possibly 'feminine' valences of poetry itself. Its procedure is highly intertextual, reading texts back and forth, for and against, each other.
Wolfson employs historicizing criticism to study the relationship between Romantic authors' subjective agency and social connections.
A study of authors reading authors. It is, as Wolfson argues, a 'work of historicizing criticism'... Magnificent readings of texts familiar and unfamiliar.
In all, Romantic Interactions is a formidable book that creates and traverses an extensive and exciting critical terrain... Readers will be energized by Wolfson's fresh take on major Romantic figures, as well as by her innovative paradigm for reading authorial self-consciousness.
Exemplary.
Romantic Interactions is the work of a scholar with rare ability as a close reader, extraordinary depth of knowledge, firm feminist commitments, and access to a deep archive of primary documents... A work of deep learning, Romantic Interactions deserves the wide readership and careful attention that it is certain to receive.
One of the real strengths of this book is Wolfson's talent for close reading, which often demonstrates remarkable sensitivity and is frequently highly illuminating... Often striking, always convincing, and at times ground-breaking, Romantic Interactions is a significant contribution to contemporary Romantic studies.
Book Details
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Note on Texts
Introduction: "The will of a social being"
I. Two Women & Poetic Tradition
1. Charlotte Smith's Emigrants and the Politics of
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Note on Texts
Introduction: "The will of a social being"
I. Two Women & Poetic Tradition
1. Charlotte Smith's Emigrants and the Politics of Allusion
2. Mary Wollstonecraft: Re:Reading the Poets
3. The Poets' "Wollstonecraft"
II. Gender Interactions, Generative Interactions: Two Wordsworths
4. Lyrical Ballads and the Pregnant Words of Men's Passions
5. William's Sister: Alternatives of Alter Ego
6. Dorothy's Conversation with William
III. A Public Attraction
7. Gazing on "Byron": Separation and Fascination
8. Byron and the Muse of Female Poetry
Notes
Works Cited
Index