Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception ed. by Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt (review)

tuai illumination that can happen when gender theory meets literary history, and I would have wished for more discussions of this kind. Unfortunately, however, some possible further connections seemed to go unexplored. For example, Elfenbeins theory ofthe domestication ofmale genius interestingly complements the work of scholars such as Nancy Armstrong, whose analysis of feminine domesticity models has pointed out important functions of gender images for middle-class ideals ofbehavior and the ideological formation ofmodern individualism . Romantic Genius left me curious as to how such seemingly unrelated gendered images of domestic angst and hope found in the figures of both the homosexualized genius and the self-sufficient moral woman might have prepared the well-known later association between the 19th-century Dandy and the New Woman. As a study that turns to literary history to develop and further the separate projects ofgay and lesbian cultural studies as well as queer theory, Elfenbeins book serves as a stepping-stone into the cultural history ofour own present. This thorough analysis ofthe myth ofgenius as an intrinsic and important part ofthe history of homosexual representation interestingly reverses its own trajectory, and delegates the representation of homosexuality as an "identity" with a history to the realm ofrhetorical tropes. Romantic Genius thus contributes to ongoing scholarship on rhetorical and historical formations ofhomosexuality and its attendant theorizations ofqueerness. Both scholars of British Romanticism as well as readers ofqueer theory and gay and lesbian literary and cultural history will find this study eminently useful and thought-provoking. $k Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt, eds. Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors ofReception. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. 294p. Martha Ninneman University of New Mexico In "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1917), T. S. Eliot theorized that the western canon continually and inexplicably readjusts itselfto include new works of art, thereby establishing an ideal order. In fact, however, as evidenced by the frequently hostile canonical wars that have spilled over into the twentieth-first century, works by women and other marginalized writers do not simply fall into this ideal order like tumblers in a lock. This struggle for literary legitimacy has been especially true for Romanticwomen poets; until recently thesewriters, many who were embraced by the nineteenth-century reading public and critics alike, 112 + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW + FALL 2000 were largely forgotten. When read at all, these poets were generally regarded to have limited talent and, consequently, to be unworthy of a serious réévaluation and reclamation. In Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors ofReception , editors Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt assemble a collection of ten essays that opens up a broad discussion about the poetry these formerly -neglected Romantic women writers produced during a period in English history when poetry, and male poets, reigned supreme. As the title suggests, Linkin and Behrendt are primarily interested in placing these women poets into a historical context that concentrates on the reception of theirworks and their reputations aswriters. In doing so, the essays challenge many ideas produced in recent critical discourse regarding Romantic women writers, as well as reveal "how the historical reception of Romantic women poets has complicated our understanding oftheir achievement," such as the often contradictory conclusions reached by Romantic scholars (2). Following a short, informative prologue by Paula R. Feldman that chronicles the history of how scholars' thinking about Romantic women poets changed in the late twentieth century, the book is divided into three main sections. In the first part, essays by Stephen C. Behrendt, Adriana Craciun, and Roxanne Eberle question established, as opposed to factual, notions of reception and point out the futility oftrying to generalize and categorize these poets. For instance, by using Mary Lamb's work and life as an example, Adriana Craciun examines modern feministgender-complementarymodels ofRomanticism in terms ofrhetorical and physical violence and urges scholars to question "current scholarship [that] too often replicates this gendered Romantic ideology unthinkingly, and often unproductively" (47). Essays by Sarah M. Zimmerman, Catherine B. Burroughs, and Harriet Kramer Linkin constitute part two of the book which explores ways in which Romantic women poets consciously sought to define and categorize themselves in an effort to stabilize their literary positions. Sarah M. Zimmerman, for...