The Citational Network of Tighe, Porter, Barbauld, Lefanu, Morgan, and Hemans

This essay looks at five Romantic-era women writers who invoke Mary Tighe in their works by name, quotation, or epigraph--Anna Maria Porter, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Alicia Lefanu, Lady Morgan, and Felicia Hemans--to consider what these invocations suggest about lines of affiliation, the construction of aesthetic communities, and attempts to shape or forecast reception. It argues that these woman writers create a citational network through the figure and work of Mary Tighe, to call attention to her significance and therein establish their own histories of influence and reception. Their citational practices produce a more expansive version of what Gerard Genette designates the ‘epigraph effect’ in Paratexts, affording opportunities for writers to signal their place in a cultural tradition, to acknowledge or choose their peers and predecessors, and to proleptically instantiate their consecration in a particular literary pantheon. They effectively create a canon of their own by building citational networks.