Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination
Author | : Barbara Taylor |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 356 |
Release | : 2003-03-13 |
ISBN-10 | : 0521004179 |
ISBN-13 | : 9780521004176 |
Rating | : 4/5 (79 Downloads) |
Download or read book Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination written by Barbara Taylor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the two centuries since Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), she has become an icon of modern feminism: a stature that has paradoxically obscured her real historic significance. In this in-depth 2003 study of Wollstonecraft's thought, Barbara Taylor develops an alternative reading of her as a writer steeped in the utopianism of Britain's radical Enlightenment. Wollstonecraft's feminist aspirations, Taylor shows, were part of a revolutionary programme for universal equality and moral perfection that reached its zenith during the political upheavals of the 1790s but had its roots in the radical-Protestant Enlightenment. Drawing on all of Wollstonecraft's works, and locating them in a vividly detailed account of her intellectual world and troubled personal history, Taylor provides a compelling portrait of this fascinating and profoundly influential thinker.