Tag: feminism

Posted on

Özdemir — Two Poems by Dorothy Wordsworth (2005)

Özdemir, Erinç. “Two Poems by Dorothy Wordsworth in Dialogic Interaction with ‘Tintern Abbey.'” Studies in Romanticism 44.4 (Winter, 2005): 551–79, 659.

Abstract: “Dorothy Wordsworth’s work has revealed itself of paradigmatic value to feminist criticism seeking a more complete and truthful picture of Romanticism, thought by scholars working in the area to be possible only through a recapturing of texts hitherto not allowed into the canon, these being often texts by acknowledged or unacknowledged woman writers. Rectifying the traditional attitude to Dorothy Wordsworth’s work, which treated it merely as a textual-biographical source illuminating William Wordsworth’s life and work, Margaret Homans and Susan Levin drew attention to the value of her writing both in its own right and as a part of Romantic literary activity/history. Özdemir examines the dialogic interaction of two poems by Dorothy Wordsworth mainly with ‘Tintern Abbey’ in addition to some other poems by Wordsworth.”
Posted on

Cervelli — Dorothy Wordsworth’s Ecology (2007)

Cervelli, Kenneth R. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Ecology. Studies in Major Literary Authors. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Contents:  Introduction — 1. Bringing It All Back Home: The Ecology of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journals — 2. The High Road Home: Paths to Ecology in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland — 3. The Illuminated Earth: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Ecopoetry — 4. “More Allied to Human Life”: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Communion with the Dead — Conclusion: Trapped in the Weather of the Days: Dorothy Wordsworth in Her Environment — Notes — Bibliography — Index.

Summary (from the Routledge website): “Dorothy Wordsworth has a unique place in literary studies. Notoriously self-effacing, she assiduously eschewed publication, yet in her lifetime, her journals inspired William to write some of his best-known poems. Memorably depicting daily life in a particular environment (most famously, Grasmere), these journals have proven especially useful for readers wanting a more intimate glimpse of arguably the most important poet of the Romantic period. ¶ With the rise of women’s studies in the 1980s, however, came a shift in critical perspective. Scholars such as Margaret Homans and Susan Levin revaluated Dorothy’s work on its own terms, as well as in relation to other female writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Part of a larger shift in the academy, feminist-oriented analyses of Dorothy’s writings take their place alongside other critical approaches emerging in the 1980s and into the next decade. ¶ One such approach, ecocriticism, closely parallels Dorothy’s changing critical fortunes in the mid-to-late 1980s. Curiously, however, the major ecocritical investigations of the Romantic period all but ignore Dorothy’s work while at the same time emphasizing the relationship between ecocriticism and feminism. The present study situates Dorothy in an ongoing ecocritical dialogue through an analysis of her prose and poetry in relation to the environments that inspired it.”

Copy: Library of Congress.