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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From inside the book
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... tory - centered program for female education at home by describing a de- manding curriculum imposed by the Vigillius parents on their foster daughter Margaretta : To the page of the historian one hour every day was regularly de- voted ...
... tory . Seated in a circle , like a band of sisters , we traced in the after- noon , by the guidance of Rollin , the progress of ancient times , or the fall of buried empires . Each one read an allotted portion of those octavo pages with ...
... tory historical interchapters that read like the textbooks from which they were undoubtedly cribbed . This was not plagiarism ; it was relaying the voice of history . The narrator's frequent patriotic interjections remind read- ers of ...
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Maternal Historians Didactic Mothers | 29 |
History from the Divine Point of View | 46 |
Copyright | |
9 other sections not shown