NEWS

Tricia Lootens

Creative Research Medal 2000

Tricia Lootens is author of the book Lost Saints: Silence, Gender and Victorian Literary Canonization. In her book she argues that during the Victorian period literary canonization is surprisingly analogous to the process by which the Roman Catholic Church identified saints. Both processes immortalized a person by erasing the historical aspects of his or her self. Literary canonization, particularly of women, paradoxically acted to silence the full range of the authors’ literary achievement, even as it elevated them to realms of transcendent genius.