Between Womanhood and Citizenship : A Conceptual-Historicist Approach to Antebellum Women's Literature of Protest

• This study investigates the tension between the antebellum ideas of “womanhood” and “citizenship” as represented in three classic texts of women’s literature of protest: the “Declaration of Sentiments” of the Seneca Falls Convention, Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. After a brief discussion of what is meant by “literature of protest” and the reasons why these texts belong to this category, I proceed to read them and their historical context following a method inspired by Reinhart Koselleck’s history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte); I approach “womanhood” and “citizenship” as concepts whose semantic fields can and should be analyzed in their diachronic and synchronic dimensions. Here, however, I will focus on the latter, in an attempt to account for conflicts as well as commonalities between them.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Literatures (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

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Innovative Learning

Innovativt lärande

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