|
|
Article: Grasso, Linda M. 2002. The Artistry of Anger: Black and White Women's Literature in America, 1820-1860.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- College Literature
- Article date:
- March 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 West Chester University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Chapel Hill: The University of North Caroline Press. $49.95 hc $18.95 sc. xii + 249 pp.
"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant / Success in Circuit lies ..." could well be the motto of Linda Grasso's Artistry of Anger. These celebrated lines from Emily Dickinson's poem (1129) summarize the fundamental assumption behind this sharply focused and illuminating analysis: that anger, as the driving force behind women's literature of the antebellum period, requires "masking" techniques to render its subversive message socially acceptable.
Extrapolating from the strategies of encoding anger that women writers developed, Grasso proposes "anger as a mode of ...