Introduction: The First World War and its Aftermath: Literary Networks and Cultural Encounters

This introduction offers a survey of some important critical approaches to the ways in which the First World War and its aftermath have been studied, conceptualized, represented and commemorated. In particular, it notes recent scholarly interest in issues of gender, as well as a focus on widening the geographical range of the conflict beyond a dominant European paradigm. A recurrent theme is the emergence of new types of modernity in the post-war era, and the ways in which literature and the arts do not merely reflect that modernity, but actively shape and constitute it.

The Literary History of the Sahel

This chapter examines the singular relation between literature and politics as developed in the Sahel, and traces the specific literary configurations and cultural developments that derived from this relationship. In the wake of decolonization, and perhaps in contrast to other regions of the continent, the literary has dominated the cultural and political milieus of the Sahel, determined the political orientations of the newly emancipated territories at independence, and defined their cultural and social evolution. This relation to the literary has translated into the multiplication of solid literary networks, noticeable literary affinities and communities, and stimulated distinctive literary practices with the ambition of creating spaces in which literary dynamics and practices served social and political developments.

Writing in the New World

Over the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish American poetry and poetic theory experience a crucial moment of affirmation. Literary networks strengthen their circle of influence, and several authors, both creole and settlers, are able to promote their careers, further facilitated by the printing press. Books such as Miscelánea austral (Lima, 1602/1603) by Diego Dávalos y Figueroa, Grandeza mexicana (Mexico City, 1604) by Bernardo de Balbuena, and Parnaso antártico (Seville, 1608) by Diego Mexía contain a number of texts which lay the foundations for a new American poetics. They constitute a canon of New World authors who fashion themselves at the centre of a transatlantic exchange, both as followers and innovators of the peninsular literary tradition of the Renaissance. Framed within the rhetorical genre of “defences of poetry” and “defences of women”, these poets put forward an engaging critical representation of their own poetic identity.

Gottfried Finckelthaus

According to a remark made by Constantin Christian Dedekind, Gottfried Finckelthaus was not only a writer, but also a singer of songs. Starting from the less-known early pastorals, the present article tries to define the poet’s position in the civic, academic, and literary networks in Leipzig during the 1630s. Special attention is given to the adaptation of French song and dance melodies by poets in Central Germany, and the metrical innovations resulting from it.

Connecting Women: National and International Networks during the Long Nineteenth Century

Women’s networks proliferated during the long nineteenth century in the Atlantic World and began spreading globally.<i> Connecting</i> <i>Women </i>features presentations from the second conference of the Intercontinental Cross-Currents Network, “The Dynamics of Power: Inclusion and Exclusion in Women’s Networks during the Long Nineteenth Century,” held in 2016 at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal. Intercontinental Cross-Currents provides a cooperative platform for researchers from all scholarly disciplines interested in the literal and metaphorical networks created and navigated by women from the European and American continents from 1776 to 1939—the so-called long nineteenth century. Organized by the University’s Institute of Arts and Humanities’ Centre for Humanistic Studies and the Department of English and North American Studies, the conference brought together international participants who investigated mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion within women’s networks forged in Britain, France, Italy, the Philippines, Portugal, and the United States. <i>Connecting Women </i>delves into both literary networks and those with social and political agendas that centered around temperance associations, anti-slavery societies, crime syndicates, suffragism, political organizations, and war relief.

Connecting Women: National and International Networks during the Long Nineteenth Century

Women’s networks proliferated during the long nineteenth century in the Atlantic World and began spreading globally.<i> Connecting</i> <i>Women </i>features presentations from the second conference of the Intercontinental Cross-Currents Network, “The Dynamics of Power: Inclusion and Exclusion in Women’s Networks during the Long Nineteenth Century,” held in 2016 at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal. Intercontinental Cross-Currents provides a cooperative platform for researchers from all scholarly disciplines interested in the literal and metaphorical networks created and navigated by women from the European and American continents from 1776 to 1939—the so-called long nineteenth century. Organized by the University’s Institute of Arts and Humanities’ Centre for Humanistic Studies and the Department of English and North American Studies, the conference brought together international participants who investigated mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion within women’s networks forged in Britain, France, Italy, the Philippines, Portugal, and the United States. <i>Connecting Women </i>delves into both literary networks and those with social and political agendas that centered around temperance associations, anti-slavery societies, crime syndicates, suffragism, political organizations, and war relief.

Guido Guinizzelli

Chapter 2 introduces the poetry of Guido Guinizzelli in the context of thirteenth-century literary networks and exchange, especially the tenzone tradition. The chapter focusses on Guinizzelli’s outward-looking version of dialogic subjectivity, through which he refines his poetic voice in relation to, and response to, external forces and others’ voices, including Guittone and Bonagiunta. The analysis of Guinizzelli’s poems, including ‘Al cor gentil’ shows how his subjectivity and poetics develop through the statement and restatement of poetic positions in the dialogic interactions of tenzoni with other poets and in dialogue with the voice of God.

‘Here you may trace a pigmy hand, / And there a Giant strength’

Albums kept by Sara Coleridge, Edith May Southey, and Dora Wordsworth between the early 1820s and late 1840s show that that although the Wordsworth circle daughters’ access to their famous fathers’ literary networks resulted in books exceptionally rich in album verse by well-known contemporary poets, their poet-fathers’ practical assistance and symbolic influence exacerbated the anxiety of reception for amateur contributors, and complicated each woman’s role as agent and subject of her own book. In the Wordsworth circle albums, scribal publication is perilously close to conventional publication, and contributors negotiate between fulfilling the woman owner’s wishes and articulating awareness of the revered older poets’ scepticism or downright hostility to feminized album culture. The poet-father’s presence turns albums into contested textual spaces where generational, gender, and power dynamics are played out in poetry.