The Complete Poems of Anne Bannerman

<p>Anne Bannerman (c.1780-1829) spent most of her life in Edinburgh, Scotland and published three volumes of poetry in the early nineteenth century. For my dissertation, I have prepared the first fully-annotated critical edition of Bannerman’s complete works, including <em>Poems </em>(1800), <em>Tales of Superstition and Chivalry </em>(1802), and <em>Poems, A New Edition </em>(1807). A comprehensive introduction provides information on Bannerman’s life and background, and examines her work in the context of British Romanticism, the Gothic, Scottish nationalism, and the ballad tradition. Close-readings of the poems examine the ways in which Bannerman’s female narrators challenge early nineteenth-century conceptualizations of gender, particularly in regard to her depictions of vengeful <em>femme fatale</em> figures. Poems such as “The Spirit of the Air,” “The Mermaid,” “The Dark Ladie,” and “The Penitent’s Confession” feature female characters invested with supernatural powers, which enable them to harness occult forces, manipulate the natural elements, or return from the grave to punish those responsible for their deaths. Other poems such as “The Nun,” “The Murcian Cavalier,” and Bannerman’s melancholy sonnets highlight the limited choices afforded to women throughout history and include sharp critiques of the Catholic Church, the chivalric code, and the institution of marriage. A handful of political poems condemn Great Britain’s involvement in the Napoleonic Wars and highlight the effects of war upon the lives of widows, mothers, and veterans. In addition to her own poems, Bannerman was also an accomplished translator of French and Italian, and her translations of Francesco Petrarch, Antonio Allamanni, Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, and others are examined alongside a sonnet-cycle inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel <em>The Sorrows of Young Werther</em>. Finally, the edition features an appendix comprised of critical reviews, letters, and selections of poetry and prose from William Collins, Charlotte Smith, Joanna Baillie, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Matthew Lewis, Sir Walter Scott, and others. The edition also includes a list of textual variants for the material collected in <em>Poems, A New Edition</em>, an index of first lines, a bibliography, and four illustrations from the original edition of <em>Tales of Superstition and Chivalry</em>.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Immediate Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2017

Author dc:creator

• Heilman, Matthew

Contributors dc:contributor

• Susan K. Howard
• Anna Gibson
• Daniel Watkins

• Gothic
• Romanticism
• Ballads
• Supernatural
• Femmes Fatales
• Scottish Poetry
• Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Literature in English, British Isles

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/202

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dsc.duq.edu:etd-1217