English PhD candidate Elizabeth Mathews has had her co-edited volume accepted for publication. Click here for more info.

Department: English

Post Date: December 7, 2015

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English PhD candidate Elizabeth Mathews has had her co-edited volume "New Perspectives on Delarivier Manley and Eighteenth Century Literature: Power, Sex, and Text" accepted for publication (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature). Draft description follows:

This first critical collection on Delarivier Manley revisits the most  heated discussions and adds new perspectives in light of growing  awareness of Manley's multifaceted contributions to eighteenth-century  literature, demonstrating the wide range of thinking about Manley's  literary production and significance. While contributors reconsider some  well-known texts through her generic intertextuality or unresolved  political moments, the volume focuses more on those works that have had  less attention: dramas, correspondence, journalistic endeavors, and late  prose fiction. The methodological approaches incorporate traditional  investigations of Manley, such as historical research, gender theory,  and comparative close readings, as well as some recently influential  theories, like geocriticism and affect studies. This book forges new paths in the many underdeveloped directions in Manley scholarship,  including her work's exploration of foreign locales, the power dynamics  between individuals and in relation to states, sexuality beyond  heteronormativity, and the shifting operations and influences of genre.  While it draws on previous writing about Manley's engagement with  Whig/Tory politics, gender, and queerness, it also argues for Manley's  contributions as a writer with wide-ranging knowledge of both the inner  sanctums of London and the outer developing British Empire, an astute  reader of politics, a sophisticated explorer of emotion and gender  dynamics, and a flexible and clever stylist. In contrast to the many  ways Manley has been too easily dismissed, this collection carefully  considers many points of view, and opens the way for new analyses of  Manley's life, work, and vital contributions to the full range of forms  in which she wrote.