Victorian Women's Poetry and the Science of Society - by Albert D Pionke (Hardcover)

About the Book

Repositions Victorian women's poetry at the centre of nineteenth-century Britain's reception, construction, and representation of sociology.

Book Synopsis

This book recognises women poets as incisive participants in nineteenth-century socio-literary history. It shows that women, including women poets, contributed to the conceptual integration and eventual professionalisation of literature and sociology from the beginning. Presenting fresh readings of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Harriet Martineau and Augusta Webster, the book combines qualitative and quantitative analysis of the sociological factors contributing to women poets' exclusion during the initial period of literary cannon formation. It also accounts for women poets' subsequent exclusion from socio-literary history by re-examining the process of literary canonisation that was catalysed by elementary education reform and sociologically warranted educational theory in the final decades of the century.

Review Quotes

Albert Pionke examines the poetry of Martineau, Eliot, Webster and EBB in terms of contemporaneous sociological theory and applies a sociological model to the canonical erasure of women. Among other contributions, Pionke extends discussion of Aurora Leigh's critique of theory beyond Fourier to Blanc, Cabet, Comte, Considerant and Proudhon.-- "Linda K. Hughes, Addie Levy Professor of Literature, Texas Christian University"