Description
Book SynopsisWomen Write Back explores the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women’s responses to texts written by well-known Enlightment figures. Hilger investigates the authorial strategies employed by Karoline von Günderrode, Ellis Cornelia Knight, Julie de Krüdener, and Helen Maria Williams, whose works engage Voltaire’s Mahomet, Johnson’s Rasselas, Goethe’s Werther, and Rousseau’s Julie. The analysis of these women’s texts sheds light on the literary culture of a period that deemed itself not only enlightened but also egalitarian.
Trade Review”[…] Happily, one of the strengths of Hilger’s impressively-argued and well-researched study is that it persuasively shows how literary invention and political intervention are often inextricably intertwined and that blindness to one can mean blindness to the other.” - James Corby, University of Malta, in: The European Legacy, Vol 17.7 (2012) pp. 948-963
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Women Write Back Gender and Genre: Helen Maria William’s Julia, a Novel Adventurous Tales: Ellis Cornelia Knight’s Dinarbas; a Tale: Being a Continuation of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia Staging Islam: Karoline von Günderrode’s Mahomed, der Prophet von Mekka The Letter and the Body: Julie de Krüdener’s Valérie Conclusion: Writing Back, Reading Forward Bibliography
