Felicia Hemans

Natasha Aleksiuk Duquette (Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College)
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Nineteenth-century poet and playwright Felicia Hemans blends bold, at times nationalist, heroism with meek humility in both her fictional and historic characters. She portrays this mixture in diverse forms, from the dissenting Protestant figures of exile and imprisonment in her poems “The Forest Sanctuary” (

The Forest Sanctuary and Other Poems

, 1825) and “The Prisoners’ Evening Service” (

Scenes and Hymns of Life, with Other Religious Poems

, 1834), to the devoutly Catholic heroine of her poem “Joan of Arc, in Rheims” (

Records of Woman

, 1828). Though Hemans saw

TheForest Sanctuary

as her most artistically successful work,

Records of Woman

was by far the most profitable, as well as “most personal of Hemans’s books” (Feldman 1999: xi). Hemans dedicated this wildly…

1592 words

Citation: Duquette, Natasha Aleksiuk. "Felicia Hemans". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 October 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5117, accessed 19 March 2024.]

5117 Felicia Hemans 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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