{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.028761061946902654, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00663716814159292, 'mean_word_length': 5.826415094339622, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
FEMINIST FOREMOTHER? THE MATERNAL METAPHOR IN FEMINIST LITERARY HISTORY AND DELARIVIER MANLEY'S THE NINE MUSES (1700)

This article examines the powerful and pervasive trope of the maternal in accounts and the frameworks of feminist literary history. A genealogy of “mothers” has formed an alternative to the paternally dominated sense of literary history and literary relations evidenced, most notably, in Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973). However, at a time when feminist literary history can more securely criticize former structures, one framework that remains to be addressed is this familial organization. The maternal metaphor can, for instance, smooth over inconsistencies in women's literary writing and heritage, and imply that our predecessors were striving for their metaphorical, and sometimes literal, daughters. Moreover, the selection of appropriate literary “mothers” is often, and problematically, driven by feminist agendas. One such important and relatively new “feminist mother” is Delarivier Manley. Implicit and often explicit in readings of Manley's sexually and politically transgressive writings is the notionthat she broke ground for future generations. Through a closer analysis of Manley's significant and relatively understudied anthology of female poetry The Nine Muses (1700), this article highlights some problems with the label of “feminist foremother”. Manley's literary project, it argues, opens out the complexities beneath the positive construction of a maternal, feminist foremother to highlight a history of opportunism, self-motivation and female rivalry. For literary studies of the long eighteenth century, and even for feminism today, the maternal metaphor remains a problematic mythology that necessitates critical interrogation.