What surprised you or interested you in Backscheider's large-scale map of C18 women's poetry? What dimensions of this body of literature strike you as most important for your further study?
Deadline: Monday (2/9), noon.
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I was surprised at the amount of name dropping Backsheider actually does in the introduction. It was kind of confusing because I haven't heard of many of the writers she mentions but it definitely made me think that she has done a lot of research and must be very knowledgeable in this field. Something else that I found surprising/interesting was how Backsheider describes that Behn "inaugurated the moral stance that women poets would claim as their own and institutionalize by the end of the century." I didn't realize how much women's poetry was associated with "morality and moral issues throughout the period" (Backsheider, 7). It always seemed to me as though it was only men at this time that would declare morals and judge what was virtuous and what was scandalous. I had no idea that women writers could have a strong influence on society. It seems weird to me that they could have the moral issues standing out in their poems but not be able to put an input on the way society was run at that time. If it was even suggested that a woman run for some kind of government position, the idea would be laughed at but wasn't that the whole point of having a government anyway--some form of a moral ground to run society?
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