India and women's poetry of the 1830s: femininity and the picturesque in the poetry of Emma Roberts and Letitia Elizabeth Landon

n� Fhlath�in, M�ire

Abstract

This analysis of women’s writing on colonial India studies their work against the accounts of the picturesque and its function in colonial writing on India established by Sara Suleri and Nigel Leask. Roberts and Landon both work within this tradition, but ultimately find it inadequate to contain their explorations of domestic as well as colonial femininity. At this point, they supplement the poetic with other forms: prose versions, epigraphs or endnotes. These have the effect of drawing attention to and disrupting the ‘screen effect’ of the picturesque and explore those ‘more shattering aspects of [India’s] difference’ (Suleri), which it was normally the woman writer’s function to alleviate.

Citation

ní Fhlathúin, M. (2005). India and women's poetry of the 1830s: femininity and the picturesque in the poetry of Emma Roberts and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Women's Writing, 12(2), https://doi.org/10.1080/09699080500200345

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2005
• Deposit Date: May 10, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: May 10, 2013
• Journal: Women's Writing
• Print ISSN: 0969-9082
• Electronic ISSN: 0969-9082
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 2
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09699080500200345
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1020830
• Publisher URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09699080500200345
• Additional Information: This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article submitted for consideration in the Women's Writing, copyright Taylor & Francis; Women's Writing is available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09699080500200345