American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860Just as she helped launch the rediscovery of literary texts by American women writers, Nina Baym now uncovers the work of history performed by over 150 writers in over 350 texts. Here she explores a world of important writing unknown even to most specialists. The novels, poems, plays, textbooks, and travel narratives written by women between 1790 and the Civil War defy current theories of women's writing that stress a female domain of the private, homebound, and emotional. History is inarguably public in its nature and these women wrote it. In doing so, they challenged the imaginative and intellectual boundaries that divided domestic and public worlds. They claimed on behalf of all women the rights to know and to speak about the world outside the home, as well as to circulate their knowledge and opinions among the public. Their work helped shape the enormous public interest in history characteristic of the antebellum nation, and ultimately to forge our national identity in the history of the world. Nina Baym deftly outlines the master narrative of history implied in women's writings of this period, and discusses in a completely revisioned context the emergence of women's history in public discourse.
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... land of Washington - the land of the brave and the free ? " ( 293 ) . Her accounts of battle allude to familiar historic precedents : " The first blow was struck in the cause of Liberty on the 28th inst . at Gonzales , the Lexington of ...
... land to land , and from sea to sea , and the echo should reach to every isle , until every member of the family of Adam should be left without excuse . For I do testify that God has revealed himself to man again in these last days , and ...
... land ! I was on the spot where the brave Gen. Warren died ! " ( 328-329 ) . In Letters from Alabama ( 1830 ) , Royall does the same kind of work for the old southwest : " At length I have reached the state of Tennes- see , the land of ...
Contents
Women as Students of History II | 11 |
Maternal Historians Didactic Mothers | 29 |
History from the Divine Point of View | 46 |
Copyright | |
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