Cultural transfer as a performative act in Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters (1796)

What is it about?

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) is well known for her feminist pamphlet A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). Wollstonecraft was also an experienced traveller. She travelled to Portugal, and she lived and worked in Ireland, London and Paris. Her travel account about her stay in Scandinavia, Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, was published in 1796. Her life and works have fascinated many artists, writers and scholars over time, starting with her husband, the philosopher William Godwin (1756–1836), who published the Memoirs of the Author of ‘The Rights of Woman’ in 1798. More recently, Nigel Leask (2019), Anca-Raluca Radu (2020), Elizabeth Zold (2023), Michael Meyer (2023) and Luisa Simonutti (2024), amongst others, discussed the Letters in different contexts. I will begin this chapter by giving a brief overview of the outlines in this remarkable renaissance of ‘Mary Wollstonecraft studies’. I will continue by positioning Wollstonecraft’s letters within the genre of travel writing. In my analysis I will focus on two concepts that determine Wollstonecraft as a traveller-cultural transmitter: performativity and persona.

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Why is it important?

This chapter demonstrates that the combination of persona (the self) and performativity (as writer, observer and scholar) with the approach of cultural transfer expands our understanding of the Letters.

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