The Muses of Resistance Laboring-Class Women's Poetry in Britain, 17391796 [Paperback]

A 1990 study of the remarkable by neglected laboring-class women poets of the eighteenth century.In this challenging 1990 study, Donna Landry shows how an understanding of the remarkable but neglected laboring-class women poets in the eighteenth century provokes a reassessment of our ideas concerning the literature of the period. The innovative poetic achievements of these plebeian women writers constitute an exciting literary discovery.In this challenging 1990 study, Donna Landry shows how an understanding of the remarkable but neglected laboring-class women poets in the eighteenth century provokes a reassessment of our ideas concerning the literature of the period. The innovative poetic achievements of these plebeian women writers constitute an exciting literary discovery.In this original and challenging study, Donna Landry shows how an understanding of the remarkable but neglected careers of laboring-class women poets in the eighteenth century provokes a reassessment of our ideas concerning the literature of the period. Poets such as the washerwoman Mary Collier, the milkwoman Ann Yearsley, the domestic servants Mary Leapor and Elizabeth Hands, the dairywoman Jane Little, and the slave Phillis Wheatley can be seen employing various methods to adapt the conventions of polite verse for the purposes of social criticism. Historically important, technically impressive, and aesthetically innovative, the poetic achievements of these working class- women writers constitute an exciting literary discovery.Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. Sensibility and slavery: the discourse of working women's verse; 2. The resignation of Mary Collier: some problems in feminist literary history; 3. An English Sappho brilliant, young and dead? Mary Leapor laughs at the fathers; 4. The complex contradictions of Ann Yearsley: working-class writer, bourgeois subject?; 5. Laboring in pastures new: the two Elizabeths; 6. Other others: the marginality of cultural difference; 7. The 1790s and aftelã7