"Introduction" / Mary Louise Kete and Elizabeth A. Petrino -- 1."Lydia Sigourney: From re-invention to re-consideration" / Mary Louise Kete and Elizabeth A. Petrino -- Section One: Sigourney's works. "Remodeling the kitchen in Parnassus : Sigourney's poetics of collaboration" / Jennifer Putzi; "A sense of the material object: Lydia sigourney's fabric poems" / Joan Wry -- "Engaging contradictions: Lydia Sigourney's sketch of Connecticut, forty years since" / Sandra Zagarell; "From 'American hemans' to global savant: The structure of sentimental cosmopolitanism in Lydia Sigourney's pleasant Memories of pleasant lands (1842)" / Sean Epstein-Corbin; "You sink the woman, & the wife, in the writer': Lydia Sigourney and the feminist literary Atlantic" / Gary Kelly; "Baby to baby: Lydia Sigourney and the origins of cuteness" / Angela Sorby -- Section Two: The work of Sigourney. "Common ground: The figure of the female poet in Lydia Huntley Sigourney's Lucy Howard's Journal and E.D.E.N. Southworth's The bridal eve" / Ann Beebe; "'Exil'd murmurings': 'The American hemans' and the politics of displacement" / Janet Dean; "'Several Sigourneys': Circulation, reprint culture, and Lydia Sigourney's educational prose" / Amy J. Lueck; "Sigourney's poetry of death" / Paul Lauter; "Emerson, Sigourney, and the didactic culture of transcendentalism" / Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso; "The poetess and the witch: Revisiting Lydia" / Annie Finch -- "Afterword" / Paula Bernat Bennett.
Summary:
"During her lifetime, Lydia Sigourney was acclaimed as nineteenth-century America's most popular woman poet and published widely as a historian, travel writer, essayist, and educator. While serious critical attention to her work languished following her death and into the twentieth century, a growing number of critics and writers have reexamined Sigourney and her large body of writing and have given her a central place in the "new canon." This first collection of original essays devoted to the poet's work puts many of the best scholars on Sigourney together in one place and in conversation with one another. The volume includes critical essays examining her literary texts as well as essays that unpack Sigourney's participation in the cultural movements of her day. Holding powerful opinions about the role of women in society, Sigourney was not afraid to advocate against government policies that, in her view, undermined the promise of America, even as she was held up as a paragon of American womanhood and middle-class rectitude. The resulting portrait promises to engage readers who wish to know more about Sigourney's writing, her career, and the causes that inspired her. Along with the volume editors, contributors include Ann Beebe, Paula Bernat Bennett, Janet Dean, Sean Epstein-Corbin, Annie Finch, Gary Kelly, Paul Lauter, Amy J. Lueck, Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso, Jennifer Putzi, Angela Sorby, and Joan Wry" Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.