Soft Canons: American Women Writers

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In spite of the recovery of numerous women writers and the reconceptualizations of American literature in the past twenty years, literary criticism has been slow to bring nineteenth-century male and female writers, so-called masculine and feminine traditions, together in dialogue. Addressing these separate spheres of criticism, the sixteen original essays in Soft Canons establish and complicate literary genealogies as they explore connections, discuss mutual influences, and propose theories of difference and alliance to create a richly textured account of the period.Rather than conceiving of men's and women's writing in opposition, Soft Canons expands our understanding of direct relationships between male and female authors and outlines the poignant absence of such relationships where they might have been most expected. The distinguished European contributors consider ways in which race, gender, sexuality, and region inflect authorship and reading, gender, politics, and economics, especially the economics and politics of authorship, form another important matrix of concerns. At the same time, Soft Canons investigates the relationship between gender and aesthetics, and it challenges the traditional view that women writers often create merely political texts.Recognizing that masculine literary tradition can include marginalized male writers as well as canonized female writers and that traditions themselves change over time, the essays in this insightful and coherent collection also explore the investment of the writers, as well as nineteenth- and twentieth-century readers, in canon creation. As it reconstructs conversations between these earlier authors and initiates new dialoguesfor today's readers, Soft Canons offers provocative reconceptualizations of American literary and cultural history.