American women's literature and almanacs in the nineteenth century

Abstract

This paper proposes a recovery of forgotten women writers, who had their literary texts reproduced in The Lady's Annual Register and in The Lady's Almanac, two periodicals of the nineteenth century. Thus, main objective of this research is to analyze, thematically and stylistically, this recovered female-authored literature, in order to extend the critical and biographical considerations made to the creations and lives of such American women writers. Consequently, this study also contributes to the delineation of a female tradition of literature present in women's almanacs. In order to complete the main goal, the chosen theoretical approach for this paper is Elaine Showalter's (1977; 1979; 1981; 1993; 2010) Gynocriticism. The development of this paper occurred in some stages. Initially, it was necessary to do a bibliographic research on the history of almanacs. The American ones were prioritized. This was followed by an investigation on how to approach women's literature, following a gynocritical perspective. In the last part of the paper, the recovered material was compiled in tables, brief biographies about the recovered women writers were written and their compositions were analyzed. Finally, aside from a recovery that contributed for the unearthing of forgotten women's creations in a marginalized material - women's almanacs -, it could be verified that a female tradition of literature conveyed in women's almanacs has influence from romantic and transcendentalist themes - aspects of the canonical tradition - and from genteel lyrics - a popular form in the female tradition -, in terms of style. [resumo fornecido pelo autor]