The Traffic In Poems: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Transatlantic Exchange

Abstract

The transatlantic crossing of people and goods shaped nineteenth-century poetry in surprising ways that cannot be fully understood through the study of separate national literary traditions. American and British poetic cultures were bound by fascination, envy, influence, rivalry, recognition, and piracy, as well as by mutual fantasies about and competition over the Caribbean.Drawing on examples such as Felicia Hemans' elaboration of the foundational American myth of Plymouth Rock, Emma Lazarus' ambivalent welcome of Europe's cast-off populations, black abolitionist Mary Webb's European performances of Hiawatha, and American reprints of Robert Browning and George Meredith, the eleven essays in this book focus on poetic depictions of exile, slavery, immigration, and citizenship and explore the often asymmetrical traffic between British and American poetic cultures.Contributors to the volume include: Max Cavitch, Kate Flint, William Galperin, Kirsten Silva-Gruesz, Virginia Jackson, Mary Loeffelholz, Tricia Lootens, Michael Moon, Tavia Nyong'o, Adela Pinch, and, Yopie Prins. In their essays, they consider the work of Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, William Cullen Bryant, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George Meredith, Maria del Occidente, Mary Webb, and William Wordsworth, among others.

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