Jane Spencer
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184942
- eISBN:
- 9780191674402
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184942.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 18th-century Literature
Aphra Behn, now becoming recognized as a major Restoration figure, is especially significant as an early example of a successful professional woman writer: an important and often troubling role-model ...
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Aphra Behn, now becoming recognized as a major Restoration figure, is especially significant as an early example of a successful professional woman writer: an important and often troubling role-model for later generations of women. This book shows that her influence on 18th-century literature was far-reaching. Because literary history was (and to an extent still is) based on notions of patrilineal succession, it has been difficult to recognize the generative work of women's texts among male writers. This book suggests that Behn had 'sons' as well as ‘daughters’ and argues that we need a feminist revision of the notion of literary influence. Behn's reputation was very different in different genres. The book analyses her reception as a poet, a novelist, and a dramatist, showing how reactions to her became an important part of the creation of the English literary canon.Less
Aphra Behn, now becoming recognized as a major Restoration figure, is especially significant as an early example of a successful professional woman writer: an important and often troubling role-model for later generations of women. This book shows that her influence on 18th-century literature was far-reaching. Because literary history was (and to an extent still is) based on notions of patrilineal succession, it has been difficult to recognize the generative work of women's texts among male writers. This book suggests that Behn had 'sons' as well as ‘daughters’ and argues that we need a feminist revision of the notion of literary influence. Behn's reputation was very different in different genres. The book analyses her reception as a poet, a novelist, and a dramatist, showing how reactions to her became an important part of the creation of the English literary canon.
Paula McDowell
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183952
- eISBN:
- 9780191674143
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183952.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 18th-century Literature
In Part III, we see all of these forces come to bear on Delarivier Manley. Over the years that Manley was active as an author, the press became an accepted vehicle for political discussion, and ...
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In Part III, we see all of these forces come to bear on Delarivier Manley. Over the years that Manley was active as an author, the press became an accepted vehicle for political discussion, and ministerial propaganda machines were set in place. The author of at least six volumes of political allegories, and numerous pamphlets and political essays, Manley exercised immediately acknowledged power. In 1709, she was arrested and tried for her "secret history" of those in power, The New Atalantis. This section read Manley as a transitional figure in the history of women's political activism through print, mediating between the female political culture of the seventeenth century and the new wave of women's writing and self-representation in the eighteenth century. Manley's writings reflect a new self-consciousness about the diverse possibilities of propaganda, and they exemplify the post-revolutionary shift to new genres such as party political journalism and the novel.Less
In Part III, we see all of these forces come to bear on Delarivier Manley. Over the years that Manley was active as an author, the press became an accepted vehicle for political discussion, and ministerial propaganda machines were set in place. The author of at least six volumes of political allegories, and numerous pamphlets and political essays, Manley exercised immediately acknowledged power. In 1709, she was arrested and tried for her "secret history" of those in power, The New Atalantis. This section read Manley as a transitional figure in the history of women's political activism through print, mediating between the female political culture of the seventeenth century and the new wave of women's writing and self-representation in the eighteenth century. Manley's writings reflect a new self-consciousness about the diverse possibilities of propaganda, and they exemplify the post-revolutionary shift to new genres such as party political journalism and the novel.
