Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter PDF Author: Cynthia J. Lowenthal
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820336939
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This is is the first critical study of one of the most important women writers of the early eighteenth century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), who produced a body of erudite and entertaining correspondence that spanned more than fifty years. Lady Mary's letters illuminate the difficulties encountered by a sensitive, intelligent, and gifted woman writer living through an era of significant cultural change. These letters display the tensions inherent in the competing demands of public and private life, revealing Lady Mary's own discomfort about the problems of authorship and authority in an age that held publication to be an improper activity for respectable women. Through the discourse of supposedly “private” letters, Lady Mary was able to find an avenue for her talents that brought her “public” stature without violating the imperatives of her position as a woman and an aristocrat. Cynthia Lowenthal argues persuasively that Lady Mary's letters, themselves central to the establishment of the familiar letter as an important eighteenthcentury genre, were self-consciously constructed as literary artifacts and crafted as part of a larger female epistolary tradition. Moreover, Lowenthal contends, the works of Lady Mary are essential to the feminist recuperation of women's writing precisely because she provided an aristocratic critique—a voice often ignored—of the class and gender codes of her day.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter PDF Author: Cynthia J. Lowenthal
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820336939
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This is is the first critical study of one of the most important women writers of the early eighteenth century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), who produced a body of erudite and entertaining correspondence that spanned more than fifty years. Lady Mary's letters illuminate the difficulties encountered by a sensitive, intelligent, and gifted woman writer living through an era of significant cultural change. These letters display the tensions inherent in the competing demands of public and private life, revealing Lady Mary's own discomfort about the problems of authorship and authority in an age that held publication to be an improper activity for respectable women. Through the discourse of supposedly “private” letters, Lady Mary was able to find an avenue for her talents that brought her “public” stature without violating the imperatives of her position as a woman and an aristocrat. Cynthia Lowenthal argues persuasively that Lady Mary's letters, themselves central to the establishment of the familiar letter as an important eighteenthcentury genre, were self-consciously constructed as literary artifacts and crafted as part of a larger female epistolary tradition. Moreover, Lowenthal contends, the works of Lady Mary are essential to the feminist recuperation of women's writing precisely because she provided an aristocratic critique—a voice often ignored—of the class and gender codes of her day.

The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century

The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century PDF Author: Howard Peter Anderson
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
With the growth of efficient postal service in England and the stimulus of a growing tradition of informal prose among eighteenth-century men of leisure, the intimate letter reached unprecedented literary heights as the exemplary form of the period. Considered here are the striking and diverse qualities both of the art and the personalities of the great letter-writers: Swift, Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Richardson, the Earl of Chesterfield, Johnson, Sterne, Gray, Walpole, Burke, Cowper, Gibbon, and Boswell.

The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English

The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English PDF Author: Susan M. Fitzmaurice
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588111869
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This research monograph examines familiar letters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English to provide a pragmatic reading of the meanings that writers make and readers infer. The first part of the book presents a method of analyzing historical texts. The second part seeks to validate this method through case studies that illuminate how modern pragmatic theory may be applied to distant speech communities in both history and culture in order to reveal how speakers understand one another and how they exploit intended and unintended meanings for their own communicative ends. The analysis demonstrates the application of pragmatic theory (including speech act theory, deixis, politeness, implicature, and relevance theory) to the study of historical, literary and fictional letters from extended correspondences, producing an historically informed, richly situated account of the meanings and interpretations of those letters that a close reading affords. This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the English language, historical pragmatics, discourse analysis, as well as to social and cultural historians, and literary critics.

The Familiar Letter as a Literary Genre in the Age of Pushkin

The Familiar Letter as a Literary Genre in the Age of Pushkin PDF Author: William Mills Todd
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810117112
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This text examines the tradition of familiar letter writing that developed in the early 1800s among the Arzamasians, a literary circle that included such luminaries as Pushkin, Karamzin and Turgenev, and argues that these letters constitute a distinct literary genre. Todd gives a thorough prehistory of the convention of correspondence and concentrates on the themes, strategies, and autobiographical functions of the letter for several master writers in Pushkin's time. It is written in an accessible style with translations, an annotated list of the Arzamasians, and an extensive index and a bibliography.

Atlantic Families

Atlantic Families PDF Author: Sarah M. S. Pearsall
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199532990
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The growth of the Atlantic world led to the separation of many families. Sarah Pearsall explores their lives and letters, revealing the sometimes shocking stories of those divided by sea, and argues that it was these transatlantic bonds-much more than the American Revolution-that reshaped contemporary ideals about marriage and the family.

Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture

Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture PDF Author: Clare Brant
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780230249080
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This important new book explores epistolary forms and practices in relation to important areas of British culture. Familiar ideas about epistolary fiction and personal correspondence, and public and private, are re-examined in the light of alternative paradigms, showing how the letter is a genre at the centre of Eighteenth-century life.

Letter Writing as a Social Practice

Letter Writing as a Social Practice PDF Author: David Barton
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781556192081
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This book explores the social significance of letter writing. Letter writing is one of the most pervasive literate activities in human societies, crossing formal and informal contexts. Letters are a common text type, appearing in a wide variety of forms in most domains of life. More broadly, the importance of letter writing can be seen in that the phenomenon has been widespread historically, being one of earliest forms of writing, and a wide range of contemporary genres have their roots in letters. The writing of a letter is embedded in a particular social situation, and like all other types of literacy objects and events, the activity gains its meaning and significance from being situated in cultural beliefs, values, and practices. This book brings together anthropologists, historians, educators and other social scientists, providing a range of case studies that explore aspects of the socially situated nature of letter writing.

Richardson's 'Clarissa' and the Eighteenth-Century Reader

Richardson's 'Clarissa' and the Eighteenth-Century Reader PDF Author: Tom Keymer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521604406
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Whilst drawing to some extent on recent theoretical studies, this book restores Clarissa to its largely neglected eighteenth-century context.

Gender, Authenticity, and the Missive Letter in Eighteenth-century France

Gender, Authenticity, and the Missive Letter in Eighteenth-century France PDF Author: Mary McAlpin
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838756522
Category : French letters
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
"This study will particularly appeal to scholars of gender studies, but will also interest eighteenth-century specialists, reader-response critics, and any critic interested in the epistolary genre. Dr. McAlpin compares the evidence of de La Tour's authorial consciousness with that of far better known letter writers, both women (Sevigne, Graffigny, Lespinasse, Roland, Suzanne Necker) and men (Boswell, in particular). The book also introduces the exchange of letters to the English-speaking community of eighteenth-century scholars. While the de La Tour-Rousseau exchange was republished in French in 1998, it is not yet available in English. This book provides translations of the first, most significant letters in its appendix."--BOOK JACKET.

Women of Letters

Women of Letters PDF Author: Leonie Hannan
Publisher: Gender in History
ISBN: 9781526127198
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Women of letters writes a new history of English women's intellectual worlds using their private letters as evidence of hidden networks of creative exchange. The book argues that many women of this period engaged with a life of the mind and demonstrates the dynamic role letter-writing played in the development of ideas. Until now, it has been assumed that women's intellectual opportunities were curtailed by their confinement in the home. This book illuminates the household as a vibrant site of intellectual thought and expression. Amidst the catalogue of day-to-day news in women's letters are sections dedicated to the discussion of books, plays and ideas. Through these personal epistles, Women of letters offers a fresh interpretation of intellectual life in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, one that champions the ephemeral and the fleeting in order to rediscover women's lives and minds.