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" Debating confession : "
Hartman, Anne.
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1095342
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TLets392433
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| Main Entry
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Hartman, Anne.
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| Title & Author
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Debating confession :\ Hartman, Anne.
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| College
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Birkbeck (University of London)
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| Date
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2000
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| student score
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2000
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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This thesis explores the notion of confession in late romantic poetry from a doublevantage point. It investigates contesting discourses of self-representation during the earlynineteenth century, while also interrogating the use of the concept of confession incontemporary critical discussions of poetry of the period. I focus upon a series ofepisodes in late romantic poetry which initiate critique of the confessional, expressivesubject through discourses of sensibility and empiricist philosophy, in particular that ofHume and the Common Sense philosophers. The two poets discussed in the greatestdetail-Felicia Hemans and Robert Browning-are united by their implicit rejection of anexpressive theory of confession and are linked by their closer affinity with the secondgenerationscepticism of Shelley and Byron. Through analysing debates which arosearound the introduction of confession in the Church of England in the 184Os, I furtherinquire how the issues which emerge in the philosophical and literary realms becomerefigured in later decades in the socio-political realm, taking a particular interest incategories of gender and sexuality. Opening an alternative critical framework for"confessional" poetry overturns generic assumptions, and one goal of the work is toassess how the sceptical, critical tradition initiates a line of aesthetics deriving fromHume, which is particularly relevant for women poets whose work tends to situate itselfwithin an empiricist rather than Kantian aesthetic. Through the interrogation ofconfessional poetics, I develop a reading strategy out of a theorisation of confession as anintersubjective, critical discursive practice which draws on the work of Foucault,Habermas, and Butler.
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| Added Entry
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Birkbeck (University of London)
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