Romantic Interactions: Social Being and the Turns of Literary Action

About the Book

In Romantic Interactions, Susan J. Wolfson examines how interaction with other authors-whether on the bookshelf, in the embodied company of someone else writing, or in relation to literary celebrity-shaped the work of some of the best-known (and less well-known) writers in the English language. Working across the arc of Long Romanticism, from the 1780s to the 1840s, this lively study involves writing by women and men, in poetry and prose. Combining careful readings with sophisticated literary, historical, and cultural criticism, Wolfson reveals how various writers came to define themselves as "author." The story unfolds not only in deft textual analyses but also by provocatively placing writers in dialogue with what they were reading, with one another, and with the community of readers (and writers) their writings helped bring into being: Mary Wollstonecraft and Charlotte Smith in the Revolution-roiled 1790s; William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth in the society of the Lake District; Lord Byron, a magnet for writers everywhere, inspired, troubled, but always arrested by what he (and his scandal-ridden celebrity) represented. This fresh, informative account of key writers, important texts, and complex cultural currents promises keen interest for students and scholars, literary critics, and cultural historians.

Table of Contents:

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

About the Author :
Susan J. Wolfson is a professor of English at Princeton University and author of many essays on and editions of Romantic-era writers. Her books include The Questioning Presence; Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism; and, most recently, Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism.

Review :
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. New Books on Literature 19 Wolfson employs historicizing criticism to study the relationship between Romantic authors' subjective agency and social connections. Choice A study of authors reading authors. It is, as Wolfson argues, a 'work of historicizing criticism'... Magnificent readings of texts familiar and unfamiliar. -- Devoney Looser Studies in English Literature 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. -- Jacqueline George Modern Language Quarterly Exemplary. -- Charles J. Rzepka Studies in Romanticism 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. -- David Sigler Modern Philology 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. -- Catherine Redford BARS Bulletin and Review