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Aphra Behn, digital collections, hypertext, women's poetry
The business of a poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recall the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristicks which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness.
-Samuel Johnson, Rasselas
Why would anyone want to write poetry depicting the streaks on a tulip when, with simple search terms ("tulip streaks") entered into Google images, she or he immediately has access to about 22,900 images like these?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51405405@,N00/145081000
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/2776166890033656815QenAba
http://www.flickr.com/photos/k2ski/3506307852/
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/1388322249065699867UfwDnW
http://www.flickr.com/photos/saffsd/2390927075/
How much would one of these images-or all 22,900 of them-have altered Imlac's theory of poetry? Would he have suddenly decided that there's a value in numbering the streaks of the tulips since anyone with a computer and Internet access can verify what the tulip looks like? Or would he have positioned himself even more staunchly in favor of the general, seeing how many vicissitudes and particulars search engines engender at the click of a mouse?
In the context of Aphra Behn Online's "New Media" section, bringing Imlac's assessment of poetry to bear on modern configurations of eighteenth-century women's poetry on the Web may help us open a sequence of interrelated questions about the theory and practice of women's poetry, particularly as the contours of women's writing have expanded with new technologies both of gendered identity and textual practices. Eighteenth-century women's poetry has been the subject and object of digitization, and this process has helped make accessible what was once confined to archives. Beyond making available texts...