Emily Brontë’s Shelleyan Poetics of Sexual Ambivalence

Book chapter


Davis, A. 2024. Emily Brontë’s Shelleyan Poetics of Sexual Ambivalence. in: Ready, K. and Sigler, D. (ed.) Romantic Women's Writing and Sexual Transgression Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press. pp. 158-173
AuthorsDavis, A.
EditorsReady, K. and Sigler, D.
Abstract

This chapter affirms Emily Brontë’s status as a late Romantic and reconsiders Brontë’s poetics of sexual transgression, alterity, and gender ambiguity. Responsive to scholarship on the underappreciated influence of Percy Bysshe Shelley on Brontë’s poetic identity, and the influence of Epipsychidion in particular, this chapter explores how Brontë’s imaginative engagement with Shelley in unpublished verses and in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846) builds upon Epipsychidion’s gender ambiguity. Contrary to Anne Mellor’s assertion that 'Brontë’s works conform to a specifically masculine Romanticism' which she had 'absorbed from her enthusiastic reading of Percy Shelley', this study resituates the sexual alterity and gender ambiguity in Brontë’s poetry within the context of Romantic perversion explored by Richard C. Sha, where literary depictions of transgressive sexuality become sites of liberation.

KeywordsBrontë; Shelley; Gender; Poetry; Lyric; Transgression; Romanticism
Page range158-173
Year2024
Book titleRomantic Women's Writing and Sexual Transgression
PublisherEdinburgh University Press
Place of publicationEdinburgh
SeriesEdinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism
ISBN9781399507622
Web address (URL)https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-romantic-women-s-writing-and-sexual-transgression.html
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All rights reserved (under embargo)
File Access Level
Controlled
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
OnlineFeb 2024
Publication process dates
Accepted22 Aug 2023
Deposited19 Sep 2023
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