Men's work : gender, class, and the professionalization of poetry, 1660-1784

Bibliographic Information

Men's work : gender, class, and the professionalization of poetry, 1660-1784

Linda Zionkowski

Palgrave, 2001

Available at  / 3 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This book examines how the concept of the poet as a male professional emerged during the Restoration and eighteenth century. Analyzing works by writers from Rochester to Johnson, Linda Zionkowski argues that the opportunities for publication created by the growth of a commercial market in texts profoundly challenged aristocratic conceptions of authorship and altered the status of professional poets on the hierarchies of class and gender. The book proposes that during this period, discourse about the poet's social role both revealed and produced a crucial shift in configurations of masculinity: the belief that commodifying their mental labor undermined writers' cultural authority gave way to a celebration of the market's function as the proving ground for both literary merit and bourgeois manhood.

Table of Contents

Introduction Poets of the Times: Rochester, Oldham, and Restoration Literary Culture From the Stage to the Closet: Dryden's Journey Into Print, Manhood, and Poetic Authority 'A good Poet is no small Thing': Pope and the Problem of Pleasure for Sale 'I shall be but a shrimp of an author': Gray, the Marketplace, and the Masculine Poet 'I also am a Man': Johnson's Lives and the Gender of the Poet

by "Nielsen BookData"

Page Top