Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism (Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters)

In a thoughtful and detailed study, Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism considers the ways in which women poets, biographers, and historians used medieval motifs and settings to enable them to comment on controversial contemporary issues. Broome Saunders’ illuminating discussion focuses on women working during the socio-political and religious upheaval of the nineteenth century and mines the poetry of Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; portrayals of Joan of Arc and Guinevere in art and literature; and non-fiction sources such as women’s letters and diaries during the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars.