Women’s Poetry and Religion in Victorian England: Jewish Identity and Christian Culture

292 Pages·2002·1.66 MB·English

by  Cynthia Scheinberg

This page intentionally left blank
Victorian women poets lived in a time when religion was a vital
aspect of their identities. Cynthia Scheinberg examines Anglo-
Jewish (Grace Aguilar and Amy Levy) and Christian (Elizabeth
BarrettBrowningandChristinaRossetti)womenpoets,andargues
that there are important connections between the discourses of
ninteenth-century poetry, gender, and religious identity. Further,
Scheinberg argues that Jewish and Christian women poets had a
specialinterestinJewishdiscourse;callingonimagesfromJudaism
andtheHebrewScriptures,theirpoetrycreatedcomplexarguments
abouttherelationshipsbetweenJewishandfemaleartisticidentity.
ShesuggeststhatJewishandChristianwomenusedpoetryasasite
for creative and original theological interpretation, and that they
entered into dialogue through their poetry about their own and
each other’s religious and artistic identities. This book’s interdis-
ciplinary methodology calls on poetics, religious studies, feminist
literarycriticism,andlittlereadAnglo-Jewishprimarysources.
Cynthia Scheinberg is Associate Professor of English at Mills
College in Oakland, California. She has published articles in
VictorianStudies,VictorianLiteratureandCulture,VictorianPoetry,andhas
contributed chapters to The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry
(Cambridge, ), Women’s Poetry, Late Romantic to Late Victorian:
Gender and Genre, –, and Critical Essays on Elizabeth Barrett
Browning.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY
LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Generaleditor
GillianBeer,UniversityofCambridge
Editorialboard
IsobelArmstrong,BirkbeckCollege,London
LeonoreDavidoff,UniversityofEssex
TerryEagleton,UniversityofManchester
CatherineGallagher,UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley
D.A.Miller,ColumbiaUniversity
J.HillisMiller,UniversityofCalifornia,Irvine
MaryPoovey,NewYorkUniversity
ElaineShowalter,PrincetonUniversity
Nineteenth-century British literature and culture have been rich fields for
interdisciplinarystudies.Sincetheturnofthetwentiethcentury,scholarsand
criticshavetrackedtheintersectionsandtensionsbetweenVictorianliterature
andthevisualarts,politics,socialorganization,economiclife,technicalinnova-
tions,scientificthought–inshort,cultureinitsbroadestsense.Inrecentyears,
theoretical challenges and historiographical shifts have unsettled the assump-
tionsofpreviousscholarlysynthesesandcalledintoquestionsthetermsofthe
olderdebates.Whereasthetendencyinmuchpastliterarycriticalinterpretation
was to use the metaphor of culture as “background,” feminist, Foucauldian,
and other analyses have employed more dynamic models that raise questions
ofpowerandofcirculation.Suchdevelopmentshavereanimatedthefield.
Theseriesaimstoaccommodateandpromotethemostinterestingworkbeing
undertaken on the frontiers of the field of nineteenth-century literary studies:
work which intersects fruitfully with other fields of study such as history, or
literarytheoryorthehistoryofscience.Comparativeaswellasinterdisciplinary
approachesarewelcomed.
Acompletelistoftitlespublishedwillbefoundattheendofthebook.
WOMEN’S POETRY
AND RELIGION IN
VICTORIAN ENGLAND
Jewish Identity and Christian Culture
CYNTHIA SCHEINBERG
  
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521811125
© Cynthia Scheinberg 2002
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of
relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2002
- 
isbn-13 978-0-511-07287-1 eBook (EBL)
- 
isbn-10 0-511-07287-2 eBook (EBL)
- 
isbn-13 978-0-521-81112-5 hardback
- 
isbn-10 0-521-81112-0 hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Thisbookisdedicatedto:
DanielA.Harris,teacherandfriend
DeniseandHerbertScheinberg,parentsandfriends
EliahuJ.Klein,husbandandfriend.
*****
TheDavidL.KalstoneMemorialFund,
administeredbytheDepartmentofEnglishatRutgersUniversity,
offeredgeneroussupporttowardsthepublicationofthisbook.

Contents
Acknowledgments pageix
 Introduction 
 “Sweet singers of Israel”: gendered and Jewish otherness
inVictorianpoetics 
 ElizabethBarrettBrowningandthe“Hebraicmonster” 
 Christina Rossetti and the Hebraic goblins of the Jewish
Scriptures 
 “Judaism rightly reverenced”: Grace Aguilar’s theological
poetics 
 AmyLevyandtheaccentsofminor(ity)poetry 
Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 
vii