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Aristocratic Monstrosity and Sublime Femininity in De Monfort
- SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 43, Number 3, Summer 2003
- pp. 701-718
- 10.1353/sel.2003.0026
- Article
- Additional Information
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This article presents Romantic-era playwright Joanna Baillie as a significant theorist of the emotions. The argument proceeds by comparing her assumptions about the passions as provided in her theoretical writings to those of Edmund Burke, particularly as they relate to political and feminist topics in the 1790s and early nineteenth century. Specifically, Baillie seeks to redress the automatism of the passions in Burke by bringing their causes under scrutiny. The article presents one of Baillie's most famous dramas, De Monfort, as just such a causal account.