Borderlines

Susan J. Wolfson is also the author of Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism (Stanford, 1997; 1999), awarded Outstanding Book of the Year by the American Conference on Romanticism.

"This year's most important book on gender... Wolfson's prose sparkles, and she refuses to sacrifice her delight in formalist craft to a dogmatic ideological agenda."-SEL Studies in English Literature "Borderlines is a long-awaited study that takes the gender controversy in Romanticism and Romantic studies in an entirely new and unprecedented direction. It will inflect and inform all future discussions of the crucial and abiding issue that is its focus."-William Galperin, Rutgers University "Indefatigable in examining blurrings of gender lines, . . . this fascinating study will engage mature students of Romanticism and feminist studies. Highly recommended [for] upper-division undergraduates through faculty." -S. A. Parker, CHOICE "Susan Wolfson's new book is a major accomplishment. . . . rigorously historical, . . . through the sheer copiousness of her references she is able to make it clear that we have hardly outgrown the problematics of gender. Wolfson is never satisfied with the obvious binaries. These are complicated, as she shows, both by chameleonic definitions of key terms and also by constant transvaluations even where one might expect gender divisions to remain dismally stable. . . . The notes are generous and useful, concluding a book that is likewise generous and useful-not to mention subtle and spritely by turns. . . . subtlety comes both from her skill as a reader and her knowledge of gender theory." -Paul H. Fry, Modern Language Quarterly "Wolfson's book is a major work of scholarship that everyone studying Romantic period writing will need to read. It employs no jargon, yet is a formidable book in its sustained attention to detail. Though generous in acknowledging the scholarship of others, Wolfson has trodden her own path entirely: employing her own hybrid brand of formalist and feminist critique, her idiosyncratic and playful use of language and clever way of combining the biographical with textual analysis." -Caroline Franklin, The Byron Journal