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Anna Letitia Barbauld's ‘A Summer Evening's Meditation’ and the Cosmic Voyage since Paradise Lost
Author(s) -
Browning Rob
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/1754-0208.12339
Subject(s) - allusion , meditation , poetry , evening , paradise , context (archaeology) , art , popularity , literature , history , art history , psychology , astronomy , archaeology , physics , social psychology
Anna Barbauld's ‘A Summer Evening's Meditation’ is a late contribution to the cosmic voyage genre of poetry, which had enjoyed popularity during the first half of the eighteenth century. Studying the poem in the context of this literature calls attention to what is innovative about Barbauld's text: most notably, its allusion to Eve in introducing gender struggles to a genre that had been almost exclusively the province of male authors. In defying the cultural boundaries that had constrained the imaginations of female predecessors, Barbauld provides us with the first instance in English literature of a woman exploring modern deep space.