New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne Bronte

This new essay collection brings together some of the top Brontë scholars working today, as well as new critical voices, to examine the many layers of Anne Brontë's fiction and other writings and to restore Brontë to her rightful place in literary history. Until very recently, Brontë's literary fate has been to live in the critical shadow of her older sisters, Charlotte and Emily, in spite of the fact that her two published novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall were widely read and discussed during her lifetime. From a variety of fields-including psychology, religion, social criticism and literary tradition-the contributors to New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne Brontë re-assess her works as those of an artist, which demand the rigorous scholarship and attention that they receive here. Contents: Preface; Contextualizing Anne Brontë’s Bible, Maria Frawley; the first chapter of Agnes Grey: an analysis of the sympathetic narrator, Larry H. Peer; Class, matriarchy and power: contextualizing the governess in Agnes Grey, James R. Simmons; ’The food of my life’: Agnes Grey at Wellwood House, Marilyn Sheridan Gardner; Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey: the feminist; ’I must stand alone’, Bettina L. Knapp; Narrative economies in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Garrett Stewart; ’I speak of those I do know’: witnessing as radical gesture in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Deborah Denenholz Morse; Anne Brontë’s method of social protest in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Lee A. Talley; Aspects of love in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Marianne Thormählen; Wildfell Hall as satire: Brontë’s domestic Vanity Fair, Andrés G. López; Helen’s diary and the method(ism) of character formation in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Melody J. Kemp; A matter of strong prejudice: Gilbert Markham’s self portrait, Andrea Westcott; Index.