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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... Protestant and republican . There have been Protestant nations , there have been republics ; but because the United States is both , it is the world's most advanced nation , the most advanced nation the world has ever known . This ...
... Protestant Bible - based respect for the printed word and insistence on ev- ery person's right to literacy had underwritten their own participation in the print sphere , as the lack of such participation by women in non - Prot- estant ...
... Protestant father , a Catholic mother , and a Protestant lover , she brings into focus the church's struggle to keep desirable females and their property in the fold . When argument fails to move her , the establishment resorts to force ...
Contents
Women as Students of History II | 11 |
Maternal Historians Didactic Mothers | 29 |
History from the Divine Point of View | 46 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown