Mrs. Pfeiffer's most abiding reputation will rest upon her sonnets, and of these the best deal with two great questions of the day--evolution and woman's sphere," wrote Eric Robertson in his headnote to the six Emily Pfeiffer poems he selected for English Poetesses: A Series of Critical Biographies, with Illustrative Extracts (1883). (1) Robertson's second center of interest, "woman's sphere," has found traction in the emerging scholarship on Pfeiffer's poetry--a scholarship not birthed till the mid-1990s and growing but slowly, despite a nineteenth-century regard for Pfeiffer that led Robertson to group her in a chapter with Christina Rossetti, Augusta Webster, and Mathilde Blind. Questions of gender typically anchor the modern editorial introductions or headnotes on Pfeiffer, and gender also informs studies of Pfeiffer's prose travel writing, Hellenism, and Welsh nationalism. (2) In contrast, despite the expanding scholarly conversation on nineteenth-century poetry and evolutionary theory, Pfeiffer's poetry on this subject has been little discussed. For instance, in Darwin's Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution, John Holmes studies numerous major and minor poets who grapple with competing Darwinian and non-Darwinian evolutionary theories but does not mention Pfeiffer, though he considers Mathilde Blind, Constance Naden, and Agnes Mary Robinson alongside an array of male poets. Fabienne Moine's recent Women Poets in the Victorian Era: Cultural Practices and Nature Poetry helpfully brings multiple women poets with evolutionary interests into view; but her expansive coverage requires Moine to consider Pfeiffer in under two pages. (3) Yet Pfeiffer's sonnets merit more sustained attention for their vigorous critique of Darwinism within a general assent to evolutionary theory. In the present article, therefore, I revise and extend emerging interpretations of Pfeiffer's evolutionary thought. Emily Pfeiffer (1827-1890) was well read on this and other subjects: though not formally schooled, she maximized the opportunity to study and write afforded her by her 1850 marriage to Jurgen Edward Pfeiffer, a wealthy and supportive German merchant in London; having no children, she could devote time to literary endeavors. She and her husband frequented literary circles and corresponded with British and American editors such as Theodore Watts-Dunton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Horace Elisha Scudder. Pfeiffer published her first serious volume of poetry seven years after her marriage, followed by more than a dozen poetry collections and periodical essays--on women's education, women's suffrage, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Pre-Raphaelite poet--before her death in 1890 (Hickok, "Emily Pfeiffer"; Hickok, "Why?," p. 374; Brown et al.). To my mind as well as to many of her contemporary reviewers, Pfeiffer's sonnets form her best work. Pfeiffer herself seemed compelled by the form: she wrote more than ninety sonnets between 1873 and 1889, the ones most invested in evolutionary thought by 1880. Her sonnets frequently blend the Petrarchan and Shakespearean forms, perhaps implying she viewed the sonnet form as equally in flux with her evolutionary subject. (4) In any case, her sonnets mostly precede now more recognized nineteenth-century poems on the subject of evolution such as George Meredith's nature poems (1880s); Naden's "Evolutional Erotics" (1887); Blind's The A scent of Man (1889); and Tennyson's "By an Evolutionist" and "The Making of Man," among others (1889 and 1892, respectively). As I shall demonstrate, the poet-speaker of Pfeiffer's sonnets emerges in a position unique among these close contemporaries: she accepts Darwinian evolution as true but regards it as an enemy whose savagery must be resisted through a moral force called Love. This claim differs from brief readings put forward by Kathleen Hickok, Trenton B. Olsen, Fabienne Moine, and Virginia Blain. Hickok interprets one of Pfeiffer's most anthologized poems, "The Chrysalis," as a religious poem whose phrase "the Love that saves! …

中文翻译：

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艾米莉·菲佛十四行诗中的进化与爱情斗争

性别也为 Pfeiffer 散文旅行写作、希腊主义和威尔士民族主义的研究提供信息。(2) 相比之下，尽管关于 19 世纪诗歌和进化论的学术讨论不断扩大，但菲佛关于这个主题的诗歌却鲜有讨论。例如，在达尔文的吟游诗人：进化时代的英国和美国诗歌中，约翰·霍姆斯研究了许多主要和次要诗人，他们与达尔文和非达尔文进化论的竞争理论作斗争，但没有提到菲佛，尽管他认为马蒂尔德·布林德、康斯坦斯·纳登，和艾格尼丝·玛丽·罗宾逊以及一系列男性诗人。Fabienne Moine 最近的维多利亚时代女诗人：文化实践和自然诗歌有助于将多位具有进化兴趣的女诗人纳入视野；但她的广泛报道要求莫因在不到两页纸的情况下考虑 Pfeiffer。(3) 然而，Pfeiffer 的十四行诗值得更持久的关注，因为他们在对进化论的普遍同意中对达尔文主义进行了激烈的批判。因此，在本文中，我修改并扩展了对 Pfeiffer 进化思想的新兴解释。艾米丽·菲佛（Emily Pfeiffer，1827-1890 年）在这方面和其他科目上都读得很好：虽然没有受过正规教育，但她最大限度地利用了学习和写作的机会，这是她在 1850 年与尤尔根·爱德华·菲佛（Jurgen Edward Pfeiffer）的婚姻，她在伦敦是一位富有且支持她的德国商人；由于没有孩子，她可以将时间投入到文学创作中。她和她的丈夫经常出入文学圈，并与西奥多·瓦茨-邓顿、奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯和霍勒斯·以利沙·斯卡德等英美编辑通信。菲佛在结婚七年后出版了她的第一部严肃的诗集，随后在她于 1890 年去世前出版了十多部诗集和期刊论文——关于妇女教育、妇女选举权和但丁·加布里埃尔·罗塞蒂作为拉斐尔前派诗人（Hickok，“Emily Pfeiffer”；Hickok，“为什么？”，第 374 页；Brown 等人）。在我和她同时代的许多评论家看来，菲佛的十四行诗是她最好的作品。菲佛本人似乎被这种形式所吸引：她在 1873 年至 1889 年间写了 90 多首十四行诗，到 1880 年，这些十四行诗最投入到进化思想中。她的十四行诗经常混合彼得拉克和莎士比亚的形式，这可能暗示她认为十四行诗形式同样在不断变化与她的进化主题。(4) 在任何情况下，她的十四行诗大多先于现在更广为人知的关于进化论主题的 19 世纪诗歌，例如乔治梅雷迪思的自然诗歌（1880 年代）；纳登的“进化情色”（1887）；Blind 的《男人的气味》（1889 年）；和丁尼生的“由进化论者”和“人的创造”等（分别为 1889 年和 1892 年）。正如我将要证明的那样，菲佛十四行诗的诗人说话者在这些近代的人中处于独特的地位：她接受达尔文进化论是正确的，但将其视为一个敌人，必须通过一种称为爱的道德力量来抵制其野蛮行径。这种说法与 Kathleen Hickok、Trenton B. Olsen、Fabienne Moine 和 Virginia Blain 提出的简短阅读不同。Hickok 诠释了 Pfeiffer 被选集最多的一首诗，“The Chrysalis”，