Female Quixotism: Exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon (Early American Women Writers) - Softcover

Tenney, Tabitha Gilman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195074149 ISBN 13: 9780195074147

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1992

Synopsis

First published in 1801, Female Quixotism is a boisterous anti-romance and literary satire, in which Dorcas Sheldon (`Dorcasina') sets out to discover for herself the kind of passionate love affair portrayed in her favourite novels.
Female Quixotism was written during a period of self-definition for the fledgeling American republic. Issues of class, gender, race and isolationism still relevant today are confronted in a manner unusual in other contemporary works, which frequently attacked romantic novels, even as they employed the sentimental and picaresque devices of the genre. Tenney uses literary references from Richardson, Sterne, and Milton, and, of course, Cervantes. However, it is as a tragi-comic parody of the limited choices available to women in a society founded on the principle that all men are created equal, that Tenney's Female Quixotism really stands apart from similar contemporary works.

About this title

Review:

"Splendid edition."--D. Van Leer, University of California, Davis "Very useful to have this text available and so intelligently edited."--E.N. Feltskog, University of Wisconsin "This series is quickly becoming indispensable to teachers and scholars of earlier American literature. Female Quixotism is not only a worthy book in its own right, but a marvelous tool for debunking commonly held assumptions about the limits of women's voices and literary visions in the eighteenth-and early nineteenth centuries. This book is a multi-layered treasure!"--Liahna Babener, Montana State Univ. "It is good to see an edition of this significant text in print. I intend to use it in both undergraduate and graduate courses this Fall semester."--John Samson, Texas Tech University "Invaluable for getting early American literature into focus."--Paul Kane, Vasser College "The book has merit as an intriguing early example of American comic writers dealing with sentimentality in a realistic world. Students of American humor will wish to read this book and its brief but informative introduction."--To Wit, James Madison University "A wonderful book . . . can be used well in a variety of English courses."--Dr. Marion Perry, Erie Community College-South "I used this last year in my early American lit. course and I will use it again next quarter. The students loved it. It really works well in dialogue with Franklin and Brown, as well as other women novelists from this era. I'm glad this text is available."--David W. Newton, West Georgia College

About the Author:

Jean Nienkamp is a doctoral candidate in English at The Pennsylvania State University. Andrea Collins, a poet, works with Associated Writing Programs in Norfolk, Virginia and is an adjunct faculty member at Old Dominion University. Cathy N. Davidson, Professor of English at Duke University and editor of American Literature, has published most recently Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America and Reading in America: Literature and Social History.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0195074149
• ISBN 13: 9780195074147
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 372