Female Romanticism at the End of History

Abstract

With the slogan "now and again anachronize," Jerome Christensen has suggested that future readings of romantic literature produce interpretive moments designed to threaten the idea of a hermetically sealed telos of ideological evolution that has culminated in liberal democracy (476). Perhaps the most interesting feature of this imperative is that, read into the network of texts issuing from the period commonly designated as romantic, it hardly even seems necessary when one considers the asynchronous perspectives between male and female romantic poets precisely on the subject of historical time and the human individual's place in it. Female romantic poets were committing themselves to anachronism, that is, to moments of time out of the "proper order," in the very inscription of their literary production. Indeed, the example of anachronism exemplified by female romantic writers represents a structural form of intervention into the sphere of political commentary dominated by men. 1 Hence the well noted, and promoted, instructive capacity of romanticism devolves as much on anachronism as a female creative gesture as it does on any particular substantive male ethos generically and stereotypically characterizing the literary period. 2 Moreover, taking seriously the female romantic poet's role as pedagogue, this instructive potential of anachronism clearly speaks to contemporary speculations in post-historical theory, which has recently re-expressed ideological themes common to much male romantic poetry and therefore gives female romanticism a timely relevance.