James Treadwell
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199262977
- eISBN:
- 9780191718724
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262977.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
The book describes and analyses the condition of autobiographical writing in Britain during the Romantic period. As well as chapter-length studies of major autobiographical works by Coleridge, Byron, ...
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The book describes and analyses the condition of autobiographical writing in Britain during the Romantic period. As well as chapter-length studies of major autobiographical works by Coleridge, Byron, and Lamb, it provides a wide-ranging account of the rapidly expanding field of published self-writing during the period. The book also demonstrates that the category of ‘autobiography’ emerged in the literary public sphere during these years, and that instances of autobiographical writing need to be read in relation to the conditions under which they were circulated and read. Part I deals with the emergence of a sense of genre: the idea of autobiography, as it made its way into the literary environment. Part II examines how the anxieties and restrictions attendant upon the idea of self-writing are reflected in published texts, which present themselves as autobiographies. Part III focuses on readings of autobiographical works, exploring some examples of their representations of the situation of self-writing, and considering what sort of readings are involved when we interpret a given text as an autobiography. Overall, the book emphasizes the uncertain and contested transactions between Romantic autobiographical writing and the literary public sphere.Less
The book describes and analyses the condition of autobiographical writing in Britain during the Romantic period. As well as chapter-length studies of major autobiographical works by Coleridge, Byron, and Lamb, it provides a wide-ranging account of the rapidly expanding field of published self-writing during the period. The book also demonstrates that the category of ‘autobiography’ emerged in the literary public sphere during these years, and that instances of autobiographical writing need to be read in relation to the conditions under which they were circulated and read. Part I deals with the emergence of a sense of genre: the idea of autobiography, as it made its way into the literary environment. Part II examines how the anxieties and restrictions attendant upon the idea of self-writing are reflected in published texts, which present themselves as autobiographies. Part III focuses on readings of autobiographical works, exploring some examples of their representations of the situation of self-writing, and considering what sort of readings are involved when we interpret a given text as an autobiography. Overall, the book emphasizes the uncertain and contested transactions between Romantic autobiographical writing and the literary public sphere.
Alan Rawes and Diego Saglia (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526100559
- eISBN:
- 9781526132222
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526100559.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Byron’s connection with Italy is one of the most familiar facts about British Romanticism. A considerable portion of his legend is linked to his many pronouncements about the country (where he lived ...
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Byron’s connection with Italy is one of the most familiar facts about British Romanticism. A considerable portion of his legend is linked to his many pronouncements about the country (where he lived between 1816 and 1823), its history, culture and people, as well as about his own experiences in Italy and among Italians. Offering new insights into Byron’s relation to Italy, this volume is concerned with the real, historical ‘Anglo-Italian’ Byron, and his ‘almost Italianness’ as a poet. Its essays bring together different critical perspectives to take the pulse of current debates and open up new lines of enquiry into this crucial theme in Byron Studies and Romantic-era Studies more widely. In doing so, they explore how Byron’s being in Italy affected his sense of his own individual identity and of the labile nature of the self. It affected his politics – both in theory and in practice – and, of course, his whole development as a writer of lyrics, dramas, narratives, satires and letters. Moreover, the essays show how Italy affected, changed and informed Byron’s thinking about matters far beyond Italy itself. As the book shows, the poet’s relation to the country and its culture was complicated by a pervasive dialectic between familiarity and distance, and thus neither stable nor consistent. For this reason, among many others, the topic of ‘Byron and Italy’ remains an endless source of intellectual, literary, historical and existential fascination.Less
Byron’s connection with Italy is one of the most familiar facts about British Romanticism. A considerable portion of his legend is linked to his many pronouncements about the country (where he lived between 1816 and 1823), its history, culture and people, as well as about his own experiences in Italy and among Italians. Offering new insights into Byron’s relation to Italy, this volume is concerned with the real, historical ‘Anglo-Italian’ Byron, and his ‘almost Italianness’ as a poet. Its essays bring together different critical perspectives to take the pulse of current debates and open up new lines of enquiry into this crucial theme in Byron Studies and Romantic-era Studies more widely. In doing so, they explore how Byron’s being in Italy affected his sense of his own individual identity and of the labile nature of the self. It affected his politics – both in theory and in practice – and, of course, his whole development as a writer of lyrics, dramas, narratives, satires and letters. Moreover, the essays show how Italy affected, changed and informed Byron’s thinking about matters far beyond Italy itself. As the book shows, the poet’s relation to the country and its culture was complicated by a pervasive dialectic between familiarity and distance, and thus neither stable nor consistent. For this reason, among many others, the topic of ‘Byron and Italy’ remains an endless source of intellectual, literary, historical and existential fascination.
Angelica Goodden
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199238095
- eISBN:
- 9780191716669
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238095.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book describes Staël's life in exile as the crucial experience shaping her literary and political identity. It relates her inner, private exile as an oppressed and thwarted woman in a society ...
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This book describes Staël's life in exile as the crucial experience shaping her literary and political identity. It relates her inner, private exile as an oppressed and thwarted woman in a society with restrictive and conventional norms of decorum to the outer, public exile of one who suffered banishment as a result of daring to criticize authoritarian regimes. This tension made her a living paradox in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A member of the downtrodden sisterhood who longed to be politically active, but knew that her sex excluded her in practical terms from the world stage, she was torn between the need to appear a ‘proper lady’ and the desire to write in socially and intellectually daring (or ‘male’) ways. Yet although she was regarded by her political masters as simply too dangerous to be tolerated in France, her subversive writings — particularly the novels Delphine and Corinne and the Romantic digest De l'Allemagne — made her appear as much a threat outside her homeland as within it, an irritant to despotic political regimes, and a cosmopolitan who lived, socialized, and observed wherever she went (England, Germany, Italy, and Russia) and afterwards wrote to explosive effect about the experience. Exile served only to give this European celebrity, the friend of statesmen and soldiers as well as of literary figures like Goethe, Schiller, Byron, and Fanny Burney, a public voice that infuriated her political antagonists, increasing her determination to escape entrapment and proclaim the virtues of freedom and enlightenment wherever she went.Less
This book describes Staël's life in exile as the crucial experience shaping her literary and political identity. It relates her inner, private exile as an oppressed and thwarted woman in a society with restrictive and conventional norms of decorum to the outer, public exile of one who suffered banishment as a result of daring to criticize authoritarian regimes. This tension made her a living paradox in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A member of the downtrodden sisterhood who longed to be politically active, but knew that her sex excluded her in practical terms from the world stage, she was torn between the need to appear a ‘proper lady’ and the desire to write in socially and intellectually daring (or ‘male’) ways. Yet although she was regarded by her political masters as simply too dangerous to be tolerated in France, her subversive writings — particularly the novels Delphine and Corinne and the Romantic digest De l'Allemagne — made her appear as much a threat outside her homeland as within it, an irritant to despotic political regimes, and a cosmopolitan who lived, socialized, and observed wherever she went (England, Germany, Italy, and Russia) and afterwards wrote to explosive effect about the experience. Exile served only to give this European celebrity, the friend of statesmen and soldiers as well as of literary figures like Goethe, Schiller, Byron, and Fanny Burney, a public voice that infuriated her political antagonists, increasing her determination to escape entrapment and proclaim the virtues of freedom and enlightenment wherever she went.
Jonathan Sachs
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195376128
- eISBN:
- 9780199871643
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195376128.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Romantic Antiquity examines how Romantic‐period writers deploy Roman republican precedents to constitute their vision of literary and political modernity. While scholars have long noted ...
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Romantic Antiquity examines how Romantic‐period writers deploy Roman republican precedents to constitute their vision of literary and political modernity. While scholars have long noted the fascination with Roman literature and history expressed by many preeminent British cultural figures of the early and middle‐18th century, they have only sparingly commented on the increasingly vexed role Rome played during the subsequent Romantic period. This critical oversight has arisen in the context of the articulation of a modernity distinguished either by its full‐scale rejection of classical precedents or by its embrace of Greece at the expense of Rome. In contrast, Romantic Antiquity argues that Rome is relevant to the Romantic period not as the continuation of an earlier neoclassicism, but rather as a concept that is simultaneously transformed and transformative: transformed in the sense that new models of historical understanding produced a changed conceptualization of the Roman past for Romantic writers, and transformative because Rome became the locus for new understandings of historicity itself and therefore a way to comprehend changes associated with modernity. The book asserts the centrality of Rome in a variety of literary events, including the British response to the French revolution, the Jacobin novel, Byron's late rejection of Romantic poetics, Shelley's Hellenism, and the London theatre, where the staging of Rome is directly responsible for Hazlitt's understanding of poetry as anti‐democratic, or “right royal.” By exposing how Roman references help structure Romantic poetics and theories of the imagination, and how this aesthetic work, in turn, impacts fundamental aspects of political modernity like mass democracy and the spread of empire, the book initiates a major overhaul in how we understand the presence of antiquity in a modernity with which we continue to struggle.Less
Romantic Antiquity examines how Romantic‐period writers deploy Roman republican precedents to constitute their vision of literary and political modernity. While scholars have long noted the fascination with Roman literature and history expressed by many preeminent British cultural figures of the early and middle‐18th century, they have only sparingly commented on the increasingly vexed role Rome played during the subsequent Romantic period. This critical oversight has arisen in the context of the articulation of a modernity distinguished either by its full‐scale rejection of classical precedents or by its embrace of Greece at the expense of Rome. In contrast, Romantic Antiquity argues that Rome is relevant to the Romantic period not as the continuation of an earlier neoclassicism, but rather as a concept that is simultaneously transformed and transformative: transformed in the sense that new models of historical understanding produced a changed conceptualization of the Roman past for Romantic writers, and transformative because Rome became the locus for new understandings of historicity itself and therefore a way to comprehend changes associated with modernity. The book asserts the centrality of Rome in a variety of literary events, including the British response to the French revolution, the Jacobin novel, Byron's late rejection of Romantic poetics, Shelley's Hellenism, and the London theatre, where the staging of Rome is directly responsible for Hazlitt's understanding of poetry as anti‐democratic, or “right royal.” By exposing how Roman references help structure Romantic poetics and theories of the imagination, and how this aesthetic work, in turn, impacts fundamental aspects of political modernity like mass democracy and the spread of empire, the book initiates a major overhaul in how we understand the presence of antiquity in a modernity with which we continue to struggle.
Andrew Steptoe (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198523734
- eISBN:
- 9780191688997
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198523734.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
Taking as examples the lives of creative individuals through history, this book considers the nature of creativity and genius from a psychological standpoint. Eleven chapters, contributed by leading ...
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Taking as examples the lives of creative individuals through history, this book considers the nature of creativity and genius from a psychological standpoint. Eleven chapters, contributed by leading researchers, span the range of approaches used to understand the subject. A discussion of heredity considers the extent to which genes play a part in giftedness. The importance of social context in defining and acknowledging creativity is explored. Several chapters look at training and skill development in exceptional individuals, and a number of contributions scrutinize the links between creativity, temperament, and mental health. Mozart's precocity, Byron's mania, the personalities of the Italian Renaissance painters, and the psychoses of many celebrated writers are all discussed.Less
Taking as examples the lives of creative individuals through history, this book considers the nature of creativity and genius from a psychological standpoint. Eleven chapters, contributed by leading researchers, span the range of approaches used to understand the subject. A discussion of heredity considers the extent to which genes play a part in giftedness. The importance of social context in defining and acknowledging creativity is explored. Several chapters look at training and skill development in exceptional individuals, and a number of contributions scrutinize the links between creativity, temperament, and mental health. Mozart's precocity, Byron's mania, the personalities of the Italian Renaissance painters, and the psychoses of many celebrated writers are all discussed.
Isobel Hurst
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199283514
- eISBN:
- 9780191712715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199283514.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter examines the social and educational context of classical studies in the Victorian period. Men like Byron and Tennyson described reading authors such as Horace at school as a dull and ...
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This chapter examines the social and educational context of classical studies in the Victorian period. Men like Byron and Tennyson described reading authors such as Horace at school as a dull and pointless experience. The centrality of Latin and Greek in the schooling of upper- and middle-class men was increasingly challenged by newer disciplines such as science and English literature, but classical study remained prestigious in class terms. ‘Compulsory Greek’ was repeatedly debated in Oxford or Cambridge until the requirement was abolished after the First World War. In attempting to extend access to working men, universities provided classical lectures which middle-class women attended. Resources available to those whose education had not equipped them to read ancient texts in the original languages included translations, children's books, popular fiction, and travel.Less
This chapter examines the social and educational context of classical studies in the Victorian period. Men like Byron and Tennyson described reading authors such as Horace at school as a dull and pointless experience. The centrality of Latin and Greek in the schooling of upper- and middle-class men was increasingly challenged by newer disciplines such as science and English literature, but classical study remained prestigious in class terms. ‘Compulsory Greek’ was repeatedly debated in Oxford or Cambridge until the requirement was abolished after the First World War. In attempting to extend access to working men, universities provided classical lectures which middle-class women attended. Resources available to those whose education had not equipped them to read ancient texts in the original languages included translations, children's books, popular fiction, and travel.
Isobel Hurst
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199283514
- eISBN:
- 9780191712715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199283514.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter emphasizes how Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a woman who was largely self-taught, successfully negotiated gender difficulties by choosing to concentrate on poetry rather than philological ...
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This chapter emphasizes how Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a woman who was largely self-taught, successfully negotiated gender difficulties by choosing to concentrate on poetry rather than philological scholarship. Her autobiographical essays demonstrate how a woman whose access to the classics was comparatively easy might imagine herself as the author of a female epic, ‘the feminine of Homer’. In her earliest poems, she attempted to emulate the poetry of canonical authors such as Homer, Milton, and Pope. The Italian Risorgimento enabled her to write a poem on an epic subject with a contemporary setting, Casa Guidi Windows. In Aurora Leigh, Barrett Browning draws on classical epic, the mock-heroic poetry of Pope and Byron, and Victorian women's novels to create a new kind of epic.Less
This chapter emphasizes how Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a woman who was largely self-taught, successfully negotiated gender difficulties by choosing to concentrate on poetry rather than philological scholarship. Her autobiographical essays demonstrate how a woman whose access to the classics was comparatively easy might imagine herself as the author of a female epic, ‘the feminine of Homer’. In her earliest poems, she attempted to emulate the poetry of canonical authors such as Homer, Milton, and Pope. The Italian Risorgimento enabled her to write a poem on an epic subject with a contemporary setting, Casa Guidi Windows. In Aurora Leigh, Barrett Browning draws on classical epic, the mock-heroic poetry of Pope and Byron, and Victorian women's novels to create a new kind of epic.
Herbert F. Tucker
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232987
- eISBN:
- 9780191716447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232987.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
British postwar epic disclosed fissures of faction within a national unity that had been artificially constrained by two decades' steady pressure from the enemy without. With the lifting of that ...
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British postwar epic disclosed fissures of faction within a national unity that had been artificially constrained by two decades' steady pressure from the enemy without. With the lifting of that pressure Scottish, Welsh, Dissenting, and female perspectives gained a fresh purchase. A new generation of Romantic poets broke with their elders' revolutionary/reactionary formation by breaking down the master narrative of trauma and healing that went with it. Instead, epic became a stylistic option, a manipulable and marketable repertory of forms. The Regency became an epic era of special effects, including Moore's epic-scented entertainment, Hunt's hedonist indulgence on Dantesque premisses, the epic resonance that Keats miraculously achieved without benefit of plot, and Shelley's utopian art of permanent revolution spinning outside history. To crown all, Byron's radical transvaluation of the genre both summed the tradition to date and, by the thoroughness of an inimitable celebrity irony, threatened to put an end to epic as his countrymen had known it.Less
British postwar epic disclosed fissures of faction within a national unity that had been artificially constrained by two decades' steady pressure from the enemy without. With the lifting of that pressure Scottish, Welsh, Dissenting, and female perspectives gained a fresh purchase. A new generation of Romantic poets broke with their elders' revolutionary/reactionary formation by breaking down the master narrative of trauma and healing that went with it. Instead, epic became a stylistic option, a manipulable and marketable repertory of forms. The Regency became an epic era of special effects, including Moore's epic-scented entertainment, Hunt's hedonist indulgence on Dantesque premisses, the epic resonance that Keats miraculously achieved without benefit of plot, and Shelley's utopian art of permanent revolution spinning outside history. To crown all, Byron's radical transvaluation of the genre both summed the tradition to date and, by the thoroughness of an inimitable celebrity irony, threatened to put an end to epic as his countrymen had known it.
Herbert F. Tucker
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232987
- eISBN:
- 9780191716447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232987.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Upon Byron's death, the territory of epic lay blasted by firestorm. It was a field to be gleaned perhaps by the very old, the very young, or the expressly marginal (Barrett, Hemans, Bowles), but it ...
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Upon Byron's death, the territory of epic lay blasted by firestorm. It was a field to be gleaned perhaps by the very old, the very young, or the expressly marginal (Barrett, Hemans, Bowles), but it was deserted by nearly every mature writer able to appreciate how Don Juan had despoiled the genre's ordinary means. The abiding epic energy of the 1820s flowed, as towards a last refuge, into Last Things themselves, imagined under the aegis of apocalypse. Poems of deluge, rehearsals of Armageddon, and visions of judgment by Pollok, Atherstone, and others secured a vantage from which to contain authentically epic effects of vastness, mass movement, and high seriousness within a universalizing narrative — albeit at the cost of unbudging orthodoxy and drastically terminal simplification.Less
Upon Byron's death, the territory of epic lay blasted by firestorm. It was a field to be gleaned perhaps by the very old, the very young, or the expressly marginal (Barrett, Hemans, Bowles), but it was deserted by nearly every mature writer able to appreciate how Don Juan had despoiled the genre's ordinary means. The abiding epic energy of the 1820s flowed, as towards a last refuge, into Last Things themselves, imagined under the aegis of apocalypse. Poems of deluge, rehearsals of Armageddon, and visions of judgment by Pollok, Atherstone, and others secured a vantage from which to contain authentically epic effects of vastness, mass movement, and high seriousness within a universalizing narrative — albeit at the cost of unbudging orthodoxy and drastically terminal simplification.
Angelica Goodden
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199238095
- eISBN:
- 9780191716669
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238095.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
From Sweden, Staël returns to London after an absence of twenty years, conferring with Whigs (for their liberalism rather than their pro-Napoleonism) and the ruling Tories, enjoying her celebrity, ...
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From Sweden, Staël returns to London after an absence of twenty years, conferring with Whigs (for their liberalism rather than their pro-Napoleonism) and the ruling Tories, enjoying her celebrity, and increasing it with the triumphant publication in French and English of De l'Allemagne. Fanny Burney, who greatly admires Staël's latest book, continues to regret the impossibility of meeting her, and Maria Edgeworth likewise; Byron, another enthusiast for the work, watches her ‘perform’ in society with both scorn and amusement, while statesmen are more or less shocked by her boldness in advising them how to handle war and peace. She enjoys her fame, but longs for Paris and French conversation; continuing to provoke both disapproval and interest, she finds that her foreignness excuses some of her social faux-pas but not others. The abolitionist Wilberforce becomes a friend, and she promises with Wellington to help propagate his writings in France.Less
From Sweden, Staël returns to London after an absence of twenty years, conferring with Whigs (for their liberalism rather than their pro-Napoleonism) and the ruling Tories, enjoying her celebrity, and increasing it with the triumphant publication in French and English of De l'Allemagne. Fanny Burney, who greatly admires Staël's latest book, continues to regret the impossibility of meeting her, and Maria Edgeworth likewise; Byron, another enthusiast for the work, watches her ‘perform’ in society with both scorn and amusement, while statesmen are more or less shocked by her boldness in advising them how to handle war and peace. She enjoys her fame, but longs for Paris and French conversation; continuing to provoke both disapproval and interest, she finds that her foreignness excuses some of her social faux-pas but not others. The abolitionist Wilberforce becomes a friend, and she promises with Wellington to help propagate his writings in France.
Roger Nichols
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195320169
- eISBN:
- 9780199852086
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320169.003.0014
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
With the publication of his Lettres intimes, people have begun to talk once again of Berlioz's venomous nature and bad character. This chapter holds, however that Berlioz was not a cunning person: he ...
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With the publication of his Lettres intimes, people have begun to talk once again of Berlioz's venomous nature and bad character. This chapter holds, however that Berlioz was not a cunning person: he was sincere, and said what was in his heart and his head without thinking about the consequences. It suggests that Berlioz was too fond of Shakespeare, Byron and Goethe, and he unwittingly admitted the fact. It was Lélio that gave Camille Saint–Saëns the opportunity to meet the great man and to win his valuable friendship.Less
With the publication of his Lettres intimes, people have begun to talk once again of Berlioz's venomous nature and bad character. This chapter holds, however that Berlioz was not a cunning person: he was sincere, and said what was in his heart and his head without thinking about the consequences. It suggests that Berlioz was too fond of Shakespeare, Byron and Goethe, and he unwittingly admitted the fact. It was Lélio that gave Camille Saint–Saëns the opportunity to meet the great man and to win his valuable friendship.
Murray Pittock
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232796
- eISBN:
- 9780191716409
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232796.003.00010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter looks at the challenging subject of Scottish and Irish reservations about the nature of empire even while participating in it. It identifies the presence of Scottish and Irish societies ...
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This chapter looks at the challenging subject of Scottish and Irish reservations about the nature of empire even while participating in it. It identifies the presence of Scottish and Irish societies abroad in the British Empire as means of exporting nationalities, which had by 1801 officially disappeared into the United Kingdom. It suggests that notwithstanding enthusiastic participation in colonialism by many Scottish and Irish figures, where certain intellectual or political structures or networks were in place, a different attitude, ‘Fratriotism’ — the espousal of the rights of other countries as displaced versions of one's own — was an important component in the Scottish and Irish experience of empire. Extended consideration is given to the cases of Boswell, Byron, and Cochrane.Less
This chapter looks at the challenging subject of Scottish and Irish reservations about the nature of empire even while participating in it. It identifies the presence of Scottish and Irish societies abroad in the British Empire as means of exporting nationalities, which had by 1801 officially disappeared into the United Kingdom. It suggests that notwithstanding enthusiastic participation in colonialism by many Scottish and Irish figures, where certain intellectual or political structures or networks were in place, a different attitude, ‘Fratriotism’ — the espousal of the rights of other countries as displaced versions of one's own — was an important component in the Scottish and Irish experience of empire. Extended consideration is given to the cases of Boswell, Byron, and Cochrane.
Angelica Goodden
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199238095
- eISBN:
- 9780191716669
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238095.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
With the Emperor's abdication and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, Staël returns to Paris and starts a salon again, until Napoleon's return from Elba and Louis XVIII's retreat to Ghent during ...
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With the Emperor's abdication and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, Staël returns to Paris and starts a salon again, until Napoleon's return from Elba and Louis XVIII's retreat to Ghent during the Hundred Days make her remove to Coppet. She remains unwilling to compromise the principled stance that caused her exile in the first place, stays deaf to Bonaparte's overtures of peace, watches with dismay as Constant and other friends support him, and concludes that such crimes of opportunism could never be committed by women. She welcomes the disgraced Byron to Coppet, trying to help save his marriage and refusing to imitate the bien-pensant Genevese who shun him. Later on, hearing of her death in 1817, he will praise her with the reflection that she has ‘ceased to be a woman’ and ‘become an author’.Less
With the Emperor's abdication and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, Staël returns to Paris and starts a salon again, until Napoleon's return from Elba and Louis XVIII's retreat to Ghent during the Hundred Days make her remove to Coppet. She remains unwilling to compromise the principled stance that caused her exile in the first place, stays deaf to Bonaparte's overtures of peace, watches with dismay as Constant and other friends support him, and concludes that such crimes of opportunism could never be committed by women. She welcomes the disgraced Byron to Coppet, trying to help save his marriage and refusing to imitate the bien-pensant Genevese who shun him. Later on, hearing of her death in 1817, he will praise her with the reflection that she has ‘ceased to be a woman’ and ‘become an author’.
F. Rosen
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198200789
- eISBN:
- 9780191674778
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198200789.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, History of Ideas
The myth of Leicester Stanhope, the Benthamite soldier, and Lord Byron, the romantic poet, forming two opposing poles of doctrine and attitude in Greece was based in part on Stanhope's Greece, in ...
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The myth of Leicester Stanhope, the Benthamite soldier, and Lord Byron, the romantic poet, forming two opposing poles of doctrine and attitude in Greece was based in part on Stanhope's Greece, in 1823 and 1824. However, the work which developed the thesis of Stanhope versus Lord Byron was actually written as a reply to Stanhope. Of the numerous books, articles, and poems published after the death of Lord Byron, William Parry's The Last Days of Lord Byron, published in 1825, was the only one to concentrate almost wholly on the supposed opposition between Stanhope and Byron. It also linked Stanhope and Jeremy Bentham by incorporating a notorious chapter which lampooned Bentham's life-style. In the 1820s, Bentham's reputation was at its peak, and he was perhaps the most highly regarded English philosopher and jurist of his day. He had a growing reputation as an advocate of radical reform which included the advocacy of representative democracy based on universal suffrage.Less
The myth of Leicester Stanhope, the Benthamite soldier, and Lord Byron, the romantic poet, forming two opposing poles of doctrine and attitude in Greece was based in part on Stanhope's Greece, in 1823 and 1824. However, the work which developed the thesis of Stanhope versus Lord Byron was actually written as a reply to Stanhope. Of the numerous books, articles, and poems published after the death of Lord Byron, William Parry's The Last Days of Lord Byron, published in 1825, was the only one to concentrate almost wholly on the supposed opposition between Stanhope and Byron. It also linked Stanhope and Jeremy Bentham by incorporating a notorious chapter which lampooned Bentham's life-style. In the 1820s, Bentham's reputation was at its peak, and he was perhaps the most highly regarded English philosopher and jurist of his day. He had a growing reputation as an advocate of radical reform which included the advocacy of representative democracy based on universal suffrage.
Jonathan Sachs
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195376128
- eISBN:
- 9780199871643
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195376128.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter evaluates the use of Roman precedent in Byron's understanding of the decline of literature and literary standards, of ancient civilization, and of the self. In his Letter to John Murray, ...
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This chapter evaluates the use of Roman precedent in Byron's understanding of the decline of literature and literary standards, of ancient civilization, and of the self. In his Letter to John Murray, Byron uses ancient Roman precedents and the transition from republic to empire to construct a model of literary decline, one which he then applies to the contemporary scene. Byron's invocation of Roman precedents in the Pope controversy to revalue negatively the Romantic movement shows Byron reaching behind his dissatisfaction with Romantic poetics to invoke a Roman standard. The same emphasis on decline seen in Byron's advocacy of Pope also forms a dominant theme in Childe Harold, canto four. Here, a focus on Byron's engagement with classical Roman authors and the decline of the Roman republic shows how Byron's sense of decline is more than self‐mythologizing and represents instead a post‐Waterloo historical consciousness. Together, both sections affirm the centrality of Rome for Byron's sense of self and for his understanding of literary history, while also revealing uneven and dissonant qualities within the category “Romantic” itself.Less
This chapter evaluates the use of Roman precedent in Byron's understanding of the decline of literature and literary standards, of ancient civilization, and of the self. In his Letter to John Murray, Byron uses ancient Roman precedents and the transition from republic to empire to construct a model of literary decline, one which he then applies to the contemporary scene. Byron's invocation of Roman precedents in the Pope controversy to revalue negatively the Romantic movement shows Byron reaching behind his dissatisfaction with Romantic poetics to invoke a Roman standard. The same emphasis on decline seen in Byron's advocacy of Pope also forms a dominant theme in Childe Harold, canto four. Here, a focus on Byron's engagement with classical Roman authors and the decline of the Roman republic shows how Byron's sense of decline is more than self‐mythologizing and represents instead a post‐Waterloo historical consciousness. Together, both sections affirm the centrality of Rome for Byron's sense of self and for his understanding of literary history, while also revealing uneven and dissonant qualities within the category “Romantic” itself.
Mary Orr
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199258581
- eISBN:
- 9780191718083
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199258581.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Devil's rides into space are a well‐worked topos in literature, but this chapter points out for the first time their literal realities in the Montgolfier balloons and Garnarin's parachute that ...
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Devil's rides into space are a well‐worked topos in literature, but this chapter points out for the first time their literal realities in the Montgolfier balloons and Garnarin's parachute that constitute the 19th‐century ‘transports’ of Antoine's literary‐scientific imagination. The chapter then offers further appraisal of what the Devil ‘shows’ Antoine in space, namely (1) the (19th‐century) heliocentric solar system with the new planets, Uranus and Neptune discovered through understanding of gravitational pull, and (2) the huge literary‐scientific joke behind the Devil's transformations as the Norman mathematician Laplace's famous ‘demon’. The chapter ends by rethinking the genesis of the Tentation through the modern mystères of Le Poittevin's Bélial and Byron's Cain as among Flaubert's personal demons.Less
Devil's rides into space are a well‐worked topos in literature, but this chapter points out for the first time their literal realities in the Montgolfier balloons and Garnarin's parachute that constitute the 19th‐century ‘transports’ of Antoine's literary‐scientific imagination. The chapter then offers further appraisal of what the Devil ‘shows’ Antoine in space, namely (1) the (19th‐century) heliocentric solar system with the new planets, Uranus and Neptune discovered through understanding of gravitational pull, and (2) the huge literary‐scientific joke behind the Devil's transformations as the Norman mathematician Laplace's famous ‘demon’. The chapter ends by rethinking the genesis of the Tentation through the modern mystères of Le Poittevin's Bélial and Byron's Cain as among Flaubert's personal demons.
JANE STABLER
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263945
- eISBN:
- 9780191734038
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263945.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter focuses on the force of Byron as a ‘talker’ between poetry and conversation in English verse. It discusses the conversational mode of his poetry, which is noted to be often taken for ...
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This chapter focuses on the force of Byron as a ‘talker’ between poetry and conversation in English verse. It discusses the conversational mode of his poetry, which is noted to be often taken for granted. The chapter also explores Byron's mobile attention to the role of the reader and with the degree of dissonance or friction that the reader helps engender. It shows that the boundaries of both speech and poetry are both enforced and eroded by Byron.Less
This chapter focuses on the force of Byron as a ‘talker’ between poetry and conversation in English verse. It discusses the conversational mode of his poetry, which is noted to be often taken for granted. The chapter also explores Byron's mobile attention to the role of the reader and with the degree of dissonance or friction that the reader helps engender. It shows that the boundaries of both speech and poetry are both enforced and eroded by Byron.
David Roessel
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195143867
- eISBN:
- 9780199871872
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195143867.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book examines the significance of what Victor Hugo called the “Greece of Byron” or modern Greece in English and American literature. Although ancient Greece, Hugo's “Greece of Homer”, and modern ...
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This book examines the significance of what Victor Hugo called the “Greece of Byron” or modern Greece in English and American literature. Although ancient Greece, Hugo's “Greece of Homer”, and modern Greece occupy the same geographical space on the map, they are two distinct entities in the Western imagination. Modern Greece, constructed by the early 19th-century ideals and ideas associated with Byron, has been “haunted, holy ground” in literature for almost two centuries. This book analyzes how authors employ ideas about romantic nationalism, gender politics, shifts in cultural constructions, and literary experimentation to create variations of “Greece” to suit changing eras.Less
This book examines the significance of what Victor Hugo called the “Greece of Byron” or modern Greece in English and American literature. Although ancient Greece, Hugo's “Greece of Homer”, and modern Greece occupy the same geographical space on the map, they are two distinct entities in the Western imagination. Modern Greece, constructed by the early 19th-century ideals and ideas associated with Byron, has been “haunted, holy ground” in literature for almost two centuries. This book analyzes how authors employ ideas about romantic nationalism, gender politics, shifts in cultural constructions, and literary experimentation to create variations of “Greece” to suit changing eras.
F. Rosen
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198200789
- eISBN:
- 9780191674778
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198200789.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, History of Ideas
This book explores the connection between Jeremy Bentham and Lord Byron forged by the Greek struggle for independence. It focuses on the activities of the London Greek Committee, supposedly founded ...
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This book explores the connection between Jeremy Bentham and Lord Byron forged by the Greek struggle for independence. It focuses on the activities of the London Greek Committee, supposedly founded by disciples of Bentham, which mounted the expedition on which Lord Byron ultimately met his death in Greece. This study provides a new assessment of British philhellenism, and examines the relationship between Bentham's theory of constitutional government and the emerging liberalism of the 1820s. It breaks new ground in the history of political ideas and culture in the early 19th century. It advances new interpretations, based on recently published texts and manuscript sources, of the development of constitutional theory from John Locke and Montesquieu, the conflicting strands of liberalism in the 1820s, and the response in Britain to strong claims for national self-determination in the Mediterranean basin. The book sets out to distinguish between Bentham's theory and the ideological context against which it is usually interpreted. The result is a contribution to current debates over method in the study of political ideas and to the study of the history of political thought.Less
This book explores the connection between Jeremy Bentham and Lord Byron forged by the Greek struggle for independence. It focuses on the activities of the London Greek Committee, supposedly founded by disciples of Bentham, which mounted the expedition on which Lord Byron ultimately met his death in Greece. This study provides a new assessment of British philhellenism, and examines the relationship between Bentham's theory of constitutional government and the emerging liberalism of the 1820s. It breaks new ground in the history of political ideas and culture in the early 19th century. It advances new interpretations, based on recently published texts and manuscript sources, of the development of constitutional theory from John Locke and Montesquieu, the conflicting strands of liberalism in the 1820s, and the response in Britain to strong claims for national self-determination in the Mediterranean basin. The book sets out to distinguish between Bentham's theory and the ideological context against which it is usually interpreted. The result is a contribution to current debates over method in the study of political ideas and to the study of the history of political thought.
Emily Rohrbach
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823267965
- eISBN:
- 9780823272440
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823267965.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Whereas Romantic studies often have focused on British Romanticism in its relations to the past—Romanticism as ruins, memory, and mourning—Modernity’s Mist draws attention to an understudied aspect: ...
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Whereas Romantic studies often have focused on British Romanticism in its relations to the past—Romanticism as ruins, memory, and mourning—Modernity’s Mist draws attention to an understudied aspect: Romanticism’s future-oriented poetics. This book explores the epistemological uncertainties that arise from the sense of an unknowable futurity at the outset of the nineteenth century. It situates that uncertainty in relation to an intellectual history of changing concepts of time and to the shifting historiographical debates in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the future was newly characterized both by its radical unpredictability and by the unprecedented speed with which it approached. In the work of John Keats, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, and William Hazlitt, Modernity’s Mist describes a poetic grammar of future anteriority—“what might will have been”—the imagining of the historical present as opening up a range of interpretive and dramatic possibilities, whereby the present becomes a process that will always remain incomplete. While historicist critics often are interested in what Romantic writers and their readers would have known, Modernity’s Mist is interested in why they felt they could not know the historical dimensions of their own age, and it describes the poetic strategies they used to convey that sense of mystery. In the poetic grammar of anticipation, these writers do not simply reflect the history of their time; their works make available to the imagination a new way of thinking about the historical dimensions of the present when faced with the temporal situation of modernity.Less
Whereas Romantic studies often have focused on British Romanticism in its relations to the past—Romanticism as ruins, memory, and mourning—Modernity’s Mist draws attention to an understudied aspect: Romanticism’s future-oriented poetics. This book explores the epistemological uncertainties that arise from the sense of an unknowable futurity at the outset of the nineteenth century. It situates that uncertainty in relation to an intellectual history of changing concepts of time and to the shifting historiographical debates in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the future was newly characterized both by its radical unpredictability and by the unprecedented speed with which it approached. In the work of John Keats, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, and William Hazlitt, Modernity’s Mist describes a poetic grammar of future anteriority—“what might will have been”—the imagining of the historical present as opening up a range of interpretive and dramatic possibilities, whereby the present becomes a process that will always remain incomplete. While historicist critics often are interested in what Romantic writers and their readers would have known, Modernity’s Mist is interested in why they felt they could not know the historical dimensions of their own age, and it describes the poetic strategies they used to convey that sense of mystery. In the poetic grammar of anticipation, these writers do not simply reflect the history of their time; their works make available to the imagination a new way of thinking about the historical dimensions of the present when faced with the temporal situation of modernity.
