Transnational Migrations: Reading Amable Tastu with Felicia Hemans

Abstract

Amable Tastu's textual appropriations of Felicia Hemans suggest that the poetry of Romantic women thrived on transnational collaborative practices and dialogical forms, and often exhibited a social awareness that belies the prejudicial confinement of women poets to domestic themes. Tastu's 'domestic nationalism', which I argue has much in common with Hemans's, is evident in her poem 'Migrations' about the national insecurities that arose out of the mass emigration of Alsatians to the USA in the 1820s and 1830s. Analogies between geographical and textual migration invite new perspectives on transnational and translational approaches to Romantic poetry. Moreover, the dialogue initiated between derivative and creative translation, between French and British nationalism, and between competing views of the value of women's poetry shows how poetry channelled diverse cultural exchange during the early Romantic era.