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Holly publishes article in American Literary Realism

By Tom Vogel
February 9, 2007

Professor of English Carol Holly recently had her article, "Reading Resistance in Mary Wilkins Freeman's 'A Poetess,'" published in the winter 2007 issue of American Literary Realism, a journal of critical essays on American literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Holly, who last month was named one of St. Olaf's Lilly Vocational Scholars for 2007-08, says the article is one of several she's written, such as her publication in Project Muse, on 19th-century American women writers.

"I've tried to draw attention to neglected writers who often have been overlooked by scholars and the literary canon," Holly says.

Holly looks at a work by Freeman, an author born in 1852 in Massachusetts, who wrote poetry, numerous stories, novels and children's books. Holly's article focuses on "A Poetess," a short story originally published in Harper's Monthly in 1890. Holly found that the story's ending -- in which the dying poetess asks a minister to write her a poem as a eulogy -- constitutes an unlikely act of resistance. As well as employing Michel Foucault's theory of resistance to "A Poetess," Holly says she also looks at Freeman's use of gossip and sentimentality.

Holly adds that American Literary Realism has accepted another article she has written, this on the New England writer Rose Terry Cooke, the subject of Holly's Lilly Vocational scholarship, which will examine the politics of gender, the vocation of writing and the role of religion in 19th-century writing.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.