B.W. Young
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199256228
- eISBN:
- 9780191719660
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256228.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The Victorians were preoccupied by the 18th century. It was central to many 19th-century debates, particularly those concerning the place of history and religion in national life. This book explores ...
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The Victorians were preoccupied by the 18th century. It was central to many 19th-century debates, particularly those concerning the place of history and religion in national life. This book explores the diverse responses of key Victorian writers and thinkers — Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman, Leslie Stephen, Vernon Lee, and M. R. James — to a period which commanded their interest throughout the Victorian era, from the accession of Queen Victoria to the opening decades of the 20th century. They were, on the one hand, appalled by the apparent frivolity of the 18th century, which was denounced by Carlyle as a dispiriting successor to the culture of Puritan England, and, on the other they were concerned to continue its secularizing influence on English culture, as is seen in the pioneering work of Leslie Stephen, who was passionately keen to transform the legacy of 18th-century scepticism into Victorian agnosticism. The Victorian interest in the 18th century was never a purely insular matter, and the history of 18th-century France, Germany, and Italy played a dominant role in the 19th-century historical understanding. A debate between generations was enacted, in which Romanticism melded into Victorianism. The Victorians were haunted by the 18th century, both metaphorically and literally, and the book closes with consideration of the culturally resonant 18th-century ghosts encountered in the fiction of Vernon Lee and M. R. James.Less
The Victorians were preoccupied by the 18th century. It was central to many 19th-century debates, particularly those concerning the place of history and religion in national life. This book explores the diverse responses of key Victorian writers and thinkers — Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman, Leslie Stephen, Vernon Lee, and M. R. James — to a period which commanded their interest throughout the Victorian era, from the accession of Queen Victoria to the opening decades of the 20th century. They were, on the one hand, appalled by the apparent frivolity of the 18th century, which was denounced by Carlyle as a dispiriting successor to the culture of Puritan England, and, on the other they were concerned to continue its secularizing influence on English culture, as is seen in the pioneering work of Leslie Stephen, who was passionately keen to transform the legacy of 18th-century scepticism into Victorian agnosticism. The Victorian interest in the 18th century was never a purely insular matter, and the history of 18th-century France, Germany, and Italy played a dominant role in the 19th-century historical understanding. A debate between generations was enacted, in which Romanticism melded into Victorianism. The Victorians were haunted by the 18th century, both metaphorically and literally, and the book closes with consideration of the culturally resonant 18th-century ghosts encountered in the fiction of Vernon Lee and M. R. James.
Yoon Sun Lee
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195162356
- eISBN:
- 9780199787852
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195162356.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
In the late 18th and 19th centuries, non-English conservatives such as Burke, Scott, and Carlyle, among others, influentially shaped Britain's political attitudes and literary genres because they ...
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In the late 18th and 19th centuries, non-English conservatives such as Burke, Scott, and Carlyle, among others, influentially shaped Britain's political attitudes and literary genres because they stressed the conventional, theatrical, and even fetishistic character of civic emotions such as patriotism — and they illuminated the crucial role that irony could play in the construction of nationalism. They represent a public sphere shaped less by natural sentiment or rationality than by equivocal, even ironic deference and a highly conventional suspension of disbelief in the face of political fictions. Burke's counter-revolutionary works present British politics as a theater in which sublime ideas and abstractions are not always convincingly personified. Scott's activities as historical novelist and as antiquarian only thinly reconcile the disparities between the realities of British commercial empire and the sentimental, archaicizing self-image of a nation at war. Carlyle expands the insights of Romantic irony through the trope and eventual doctrine of fetishism: labor that forgets the role it has played in creating the forces that appear to command it.Less
In the late 18th and 19th centuries, non-English conservatives such as Burke, Scott, and Carlyle, among others, influentially shaped Britain's political attitudes and literary genres because they stressed the conventional, theatrical, and even fetishistic character of civic emotions such as patriotism — and they illuminated the crucial role that irony could play in the construction of nationalism. They represent a public sphere shaped less by natural sentiment or rationality than by equivocal, even ironic deference and a highly conventional suspension of disbelief in the face of political fictions. Burke's counter-revolutionary works present British politics as a theater in which sublime ideas and abstractions are not always convincingly personified. Scott's activities as historical novelist and as antiquarian only thinly reconcile the disparities between the realities of British commercial empire and the sentimental, archaicizing self-image of a nation at war. Carlyle expands the insights of Romantic irony through the trope and eventual doctrine of fetishism: labor that forgets the role it has played in creating the forces that appear to command it.
Richard Niland
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199580347
- eISBN:
- 9780191722738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199580347.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, European Literature
This chapter explores Conrad's literary style in the early years of his career, detailing how Conrad balanced his Polish literary and philosophical heritage with his new British cultural environment. ...
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This chapter explores Conrad's literary style in the early years of his career, detailing how Conrad balanced his Polish literary and philosophical heritage with his new British cultural environment. It investigates Conrad's early short stories and novels in the context of English neo-Hegelian philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the context of the work of F.H. Bradley. It also outlines Conrad's connection to Romantic and Victorian traditions of nineteenth century literature represented by William Hazlitt and Thomas Carlyle, examining Conrad's narrative and his representation of time and history up to and including Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. By focusing on Conrad's interest in various forms of historiography, from oral narratives to seminal Western historians such as Herodotus, the chapter places Conrad's early work in a variety of new historiographical contexts.Less
This chapter explores Conrad's literary style in the early years of his career, detailing how Conrad balanced his Polish literary and philosophical heritage with his new British cultural environment. It investigates Conrad's early short stories and novels in the context of English neo-Hegelian philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the context of the work of F.H. Bradley. It also outlines Conrad's connection to Romantic and Victorian traditions of nineteenth century literature represented by William Hazlitt and Thomas Carlyle, examining Conrad's narrative and his representation of time and history up to and including Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. By focusing on Conrad's interest in various forms of historiography, from oral narratives to seminal Western historians such as Herodotus, the chapter places Conrad's early work in a variety of new historiographical contexts.
B. W. Young
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199256228
- eISBN:
- 9780191719660
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256228.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the importance of understanding the period immediately preceding the Victorian era for gaining a better understanding of Victorians. The ...
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This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the importance of understanding the period immediately preceding the Victorian era for gaining a better understanding of Victorians. The organization of the book is then described, which begins with the contribution of an author born in the mid-1790s, namely Thomas Carlyle, and ending as the consciously Victorian generation began to die out in the 1930s.Less
This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the importance of understanding the period immediately preceding the Victorian era for gaining a better understanding of Victorians. The organization of the book is then described, which begins with the contribution of an author born in the mid-1790s, namely Thomas Carlyle, and ending as the consciously Victorian generation began to die out in the 1930s.
B. W. Young
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199256228
- eISBN:
- 9780191719660
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256228.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter explores Thomas Carlyle's fascination with the 18th century. It argues that Carlyle demonstrates a consistent response concerning the 18th century: a deep suspicion of its lack of ...
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This chapter explores Thomas Carlyle's fascination with the 18th century. It argues that Carlyle demonstrates a consistent response concerning the 18th century: a deep suspicion of its lack of heroism, either religious or political; its place as a historical rupture between the heroic age of the Reformation and the hollowness of modernity; the starkly contrasting roles played by France, Germany, and Britain in these developments; and the need for the prophet-historian to undo the secularizing worldliness of 18th-century philosophy if the soul of the 19th century were to be saved from this compromised inheritance. These themes are examined in relation to the monumental works he devoted early and late in his career to what he called the sceptical 18th century: The French Revolution and his History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great (1858-65).Less
This chapter explores Thomas Carlyle's fascination with the 18th century. It argues that Carlyle demonstrates a consistent response concerning the 18th century: a deep suspicion of its lack of heroism, either religious or political; its place as a historical rupture between the heroic age of the Reformation and the hollowness of modernity; the starkly contrasting roles played by France, Germany, and Britain in these developments; and the need for the prophet-historian to undo the secularizing worldliness of 18th-century philosophy if the soul of the 19th century were to be saved from this compromised inheritance. These themes are examined in relation to the monumental works he devoted early and late in his career to what he called the sceptical 18th century: The French Revolution and his History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great (1858-65).
B. W. Young
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199256228
- eISBN:
- 9780191719660
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256228.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter explores Thomas Carlyle's portrayal of Frederick the Great. It is argued that Carlyle's heroic portrait of Frederick the Great allowed him to construct and indulge a nostalgic politics ...
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This chapter explores Thomas Carlyle's portrayal of Frederick the Great. It is argued that Carlyle's heroic portrait of Frederick the Great allowed him to construct and indulge a nostalgic politics from afar. Whereas The French Revolution acquired a mass of readers and devotees, the work on Frederick was never to achieve anything like the same popularity; readers had grown tired of Carlyle's explorations of the 18th century.Less
This chapter explores Thomas Carlyle's portrayal of Frederick the Great. It is argued that Carlyle's heroic portrait of Frederick the Great allowed him to construct and indulge a nostalgic politics from afar. Whereas The French Revolution acquired a mass of readers and devotees, the work on Frederick was never to achieve anything like the same popularity; readers had grown tired of Carlyle's explorations of the 18th century.
Rosemary Ashton
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263303
- eISBN:
- 9780191734137
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263303.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter provides the background for the sojourn of Thomas and Jane Carlyle in London. Thomas travelled to London with the manuscript of Sartor Resartus, hoping to find a publisher for that ...
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This chapter provides the background for the sojourn of Thomas and Jane Carlyle in London. Thomas travelled to London with the manuscript of Sartor Resartus, hoping to find a publisher for that strange satirical rhapsody. This work mounted a sustained rhetorical attack on ‘the condition of England’. It is not the case that the Scottish Carlyle opposed all things English as somehow inferior to the institutions and doings in his native land. He was never inclined to support Scottish separatism. He and his wife, Jane, later agreed to preferring life in London. Sartor Resartus would eventually claim the status of an iconic work. In Sartor itself, Carlyle's German philosopher Diogenes Teufelsdröckh states that he honours two kinds of men, ‘and no third’. The distinctive Carlylean voice of Sartor Resartus acted on its readers as a secular Bible, a Pilgrim's Progress for the age.Less
This chapter provides the background for the sojourn of Thomas and Jane Carlyle in London. Thomas travelled to London with the manuscript of Sartor Resartus, hoping to find a publisher for that strange satirical rhapsody. This work mounted a sustained rhetorical attack on ‘the condition of England’. It is not the case that the Scottish Carlyle opposed all things English as somehow inferior to the institutions and doings in his native land. He was never inclined to support Scottish separatism. He and his wife, Jane, later agreed to preferring life in London. Sartor Resartus would eventually claim the status of an iconic work. In Sartor itself, Carlyle's German philosopher Diogenes Teufelsdröckh states that he honours two kinds of men, ‘and no third’. The distinctive Carlylean voice of Sartor Resartus acted on its readers as a secular Bible, a Pilgrim's Progress for the age.
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/9780199232987.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
In its 1820–40 efflorescence, the poetic closet drama staked out a space that renewed epic also made its own during the heyday of British national Reform. Literalizing poetic ‘argument’ into debate, ...
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In its 1820–40 efflorescence, the poetic closet drama staked out a space that renewed epic also made its own during the heyday of British national Reform. Literalizing poetic ‘argument’ into debate, and expanding the classical topos of the epic consult, epoists of the 1830s wrote poems whose narrative took the form of an extended, dialogical deliberation. These works addressed their readers as an auditory convened to assist at a process of judgment affirming national unity on a basis liberal rather than authoritarian — or else, in an epic undersong like the Chartist Cooper's, they appealed to liberal principles on behalf of those whom the 1832 compact had left out. As rising Victorian stars like Carlyle and Disraeli worked this forensic vein, Browning took it to extremes that all but wrecked his career. Even Bible epoists (Heraud, Bulmer) now discarded the 1820s mass rush to Judgment, in favour of persuasive rhetoric; and epics of church history that overlaid Protestant Reformation on contemporary Reform supervened upon the dogmatizing of former decades.Less
In its 1820–40 efflorescence, the poetic closet drama staked out a space that renewed epic also made its own during the heyday of British national Reform. Literalizing poetic ‘argument’ into debate, and expanding the classical topos of the epic consult, epoists of the 1830s wrote poems whose narrative took the form of an extended, dialogical deliberation. These works addressed their readers as an auditory convened to assist at a process of judgment affirming national unity on a basis liberal rather than authoritarian — or else, in an epic undersong like the Chartist Cooper's, they appealed to liberal principles on behalf of those whom the 1832 compact had left out. As rising Victorian stars like Carlyle and Disraeli worked this forensic vein, Browning took it to extremes that all but wrecked his career. Even Bible epoists (Heraud, Bulmer) now discarded the 1820s mass rush to Judgment, in favour of persuasive rhetoric; and epics of church history that overlaid Protestant Reformation on contemporary Reform supervened upon the dogmatizing of former decades.
Juliette Atkinson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199572137
- eISBN:
- 9780191722967
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572137.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
In 1939, Virginia Woolf called for a more inclusive form of biography, which would include ‘the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious’. She did so in part as a ...
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In 1939, Virginia Woolf called for a more inclusive form of biography, which would include ‘the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious’. She did so in part as a reaction against Victorian life‐writing, deemed to have been overly preoccupied with ‘Great Men’. Yet a significant number of Victorians had already broken ranks to write the lives of humble, unsuccessful, or neglected men and women. Victorian Biography Reconsidered seeks to uncover and assess this trend. The book begins with an overview of Victorian biography followed by a reflection on how the bagginess of nineteenth‐century hero‐worship enabled new subjects to emerge. Biographies of ‘hidden’ lives are then scrutinized through chapters on the lives of working‐class naturalists, failed destinies, minor women writers, neglected Romantic poets rescued by Victorian biographers, and, finally, the Dictionary of National Biography. In its conclusion, the book briefly discusses how Virginia Woolf absorbed earlier biographical trends before redirecting the representation of ‘hidden’ lives. Victorian Biography Reconsidered argues that, often paradoxically, nineteenth‐century biographers regarded the public sphere with intense wariness. At a time of instability for men of letters, biographers embraced the role of mediators in a manner that asserted their own cultural authority. Frequently, they showed little interest in vouchsafing immortality for their unknown or forgotten subjects, but strove instead to provoke among their readers a feeling of gratitude for the hidden labour that sustained the nation and an appreciation for the writers who had brought it to their attention.Less
In 1939, Virginia Woolf called for a more inclusive form of biography, which would include ‘the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious’. She did so in part as a reaction against Victorian life‐writing, deemed to have been overly preoccupied with ‘Great Men’. Yet a significant number of Victorians had already broken ranks to write the lives of humble, unsuccessful, or neglected men and women. Victorian Biography Reconsidered seeks to uncover and assess this trend. The book begins with an overview of Victorian biography followed by a reflection on how the bagginess of nineteenth‐century hero‐worship enabled new subjects to emerge. Biographies of ‘hidden’ lives are then scrutinized through chapters on the lives of working‐class naturalists, failed destinies, minor women writers, neglected Romantic poets rescued by Victorian biographers, and, finally, the Dictionary of National Biography. In its conclusion, the book briefly discusses how Virginia Woolf absorbed earlier biographical trends before redirecting the representation of ‘hidden’ lives. Victorian Biography Reconsidered argues that, often paradoxically, nineteenth‐century biographers regarded the public sphere with intense wariness. At a time of instability for men of letters, biographers embraced the role of mediators in a manner that asserted their own cultural authority. Frequently, they showed little interest in vouchsafing immortality for their unknown or forgotten subjects, but strove instead to provoke among their readers a feeling of gratitude for the hidden labour that sustained the nation and an appreciation for the writers who had brought it to their attention.
Paul Turner
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122395
- eISBN:
- 9780191671401
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122395.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Starting as the son of a barely literate Scottish stonemason, Thomas Carlyle ended as perhaps the most influential writer of his time. An important factor in this triumph of self-help was the ...
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Starting as the son of a barely literate Scottish stonemason, Thomas Carlyle ended as perhaps the most influential writer of his time. An important factor in this triumph of self-help was the invention of Carlylese. The literary hack-work that was Carlyle’s first defence against poverty included, besides reviewing for periodicals, translating and criticising German literature. Before 1830, however, his career was fairly conventional. Apart from a fragment of an autobiographical novel, Wotton Reinfred, his most interesting early work was ‘Signs of the Times’. This anonymous article in the Edinburgh Review condemned all current trends of thought. The metaphor served to link Utilitarianism with the triumphs of technology, via a tacit pun on James Mill’s surname, and to unify a variety of complaints, all implying that the age had lost the sense of mystery, morality, and religion. The device inaugurated Carlyle’s practice of making rather vague and general intuitions seem precise by an ingenious use of imagery.Less
Starting as the son of a barely literate Scottish stonemason, Thomas Carlyle ended as perhaps the most influential writer of his time. An important factor in this triumph of self-help was the invention of Carlylese. The literary hack-work that was Carlyle’s first defence against poverty included, besides reviewing for periodicals, translating and criticising German literature. Before 1830, however, his career was fairly conventional. Apart from a fragment of an autobiographical novel, Wotton Reinfred, his most interesting early work was ‘Signs of the Times’. This anonymous article in the Edinburgh Review condemned all current trends of thought. The metaphor served to link Utilitarianism with the triumphs of technology, via a tacit pun on James Mill’s surname, and to unify a variety of complaints, all implying that the age had lost the sense of mystery, morality, and religion. The device inaugurated Carlyle’s practice of making rather vague and general intuitions seem precise by an ingenious use of imagery.
John M. Picker
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195151916
- eISBN:
- 9780199787944
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151916.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter argues that later 19th-century Londoners' deliberations over street music serve as a gauge of that urban community's explicit demands and entrenched biases. It shows how fights for ...
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This chapter argues that later 19th-century Londoners' deliberations over street music serve as a gauge of that urban community's explicit demands and entrenched biases. It shows how fights for silence repeatedly emerged as regional struggles against street music, insofar as they attempted not only to protect literal neighborhoods and city blocks from intrusive noises but also to defend more abstract regions of identity, those critical domains of nationality, professionalism, and the body. These ongoing battles over sound were concretely as well as conceptually territorial. Even as those opposed proclaimed as their principal goal the removal of music from the streets throughout the City and West London, including Belgravia, Kensington, and Chelsea, they endeavored to maintain clear boundaries in three main interrelated and at times overlapping areas: first, defending the purity of English national identity and culture against the taint of foreign infiltration; second, upholding economic and social divisions between the lower classes and middle-class professionals; and third, protecting the frail, afflicted bodies of (English, middle-class) invalids from the invasive, debilitating effects of (foreign, lower-class) street music. The chapter considers the verbal and visual responses of large numbers of Londoners, including Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, and John Leech, to the strains of a powerful threat.Less
This chapter argues that later 19th-century Londoners' deliberations over street music serve as a gauge of that urban community's explicit demands and entrenched biases. It shows how fights for silence repeatedly emerged as regional struggles against street music, insofar as they attempted not only to protect literal neighborhoods and city blocks from intrusive noises but also to defend more abstract regions of identity, those critical domains of nationality, professionalism, and the body. These ongoing battles over sound were concretely as well as conceptually territorial. Even as those opposed proclaimed as their principal goal the removal of music from the streets throughout the City and West London, including Belgravia, Kensington, and Chelsea, they endeavored to maintain clear boundaries in three main interrelated and at times overlapping areas: first, defending the purity of English national identity and culture against the taint of foreign infiltration; second, upholding economic and social divisions between the lower classes and middle-class professionals; and third, protecting the frail, afflicted bodies of (English, middle-class) invalids from the invasive, debilitating effects of (foreign, lower-class) street music. The chapter considers the verbal and visual responses of large numbers of Londoners, including Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, and John Leech, to the strains of a powerful threat.
Nigel Leask
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199572618
- eISBN:
- 9780191722974
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572618.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 18th-century Literature
This final chapter follows Burns's life and poetry ‘across the shadow line’ into the realms of posthumous fame, as propelled by the biographical and editorial labours of Dr James Currie, who ...
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This final chapter follows Burns's life and poetry ‘across the shadow line’ into the realms of posthumous fame, as propelled by the biographical and editorial labours of Dr James Currie, who presented a carefully selected and ‘regulated’ Burns to the Romantic generation. The book concludes by reflecting upon the ‘pastoral closure’ posthumously imposed by Currie upon Burns's poetry, as well as considering Burns's still largely unacknowledged influence on British Romanticism. Proposing that Currie's Burns exerted a major influence on Wordsworth's ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads, it explores the polemic concerning the poet's reputation in the two decades following his death, resulting in the subsequent marginalisation of Scottish Romanticism in relation to an ‘organic’ English model of culture.Less
This final chapter follows Burns's life and poetry ‘across the shadow line’ into the realms of posthumous fame, as propelled by the biographical and editorial labours of Dr James Currie, who presented a carefully selected and ‘regulated’ Burns to the Romantic generation. The book concludes by reflecting upon the ‘pastoral closure’ posthumously imposed by Currie upon Burns's poetry, as well as considering Burns's still largely unacknowledged influence on British Romanticism. Proposing that Currie's Burns exerted a major influence on Wordsworth's ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads, it explores the polemic concerning the poet's reputation in the two decades following his death, resulting in the subsequent marginalisation of Scottish Romanticism in relation to an ‘organic’ English model of culture.
Yoon Sun Lee
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195162356
- eISBN:
- 9780199787852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195162356.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Romantic nationalism in Britain was strengthened by the discovery of irony's civic potential. As irony became part of public discourse and behavioral repertoire, the awareness of artifice and ...
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Romantic nationalism in Britain was strengthened by the discovery of irony's civic potential. As irony became part of public discourse and behavioral repertoire, the awareness of artifice and convention was made compatible with displays of loyalty and deference. This chapter discusses how modern nationalism and the discourse of Romantic irony arose in the same historical context. Irony proved particularly useful in representing the peculiar status held by Ireland and Scotland within the British nation. Rather than trying to obscure the fictive and fractured nature of British unity, Burke's letters and speeches, Scott's historical novels, and Carlyle's reviews and histories rely on the paradoxically cohesive force of irony.Less
Romantic nationalism in Britain was strengthened by the discovery of irony's civic potential. As irony became part of public discourse and behavioral repertoire, the awareness of artifice and convention was made compatible with displays of loyalty and deference. This chapter discusses how modern nationalism and the discourse of Romantic irony arose in the same historical context. Irony proved particularly useful in representing the peculiar status held by Ireland and Scotland within the British nation. Rather than trying to obscure the fictive and fractured nature of British unity, Burke's letters and speeches, Scott's historical novels, and Carlyle's reviews and histories rely on the paradoxically cohesive force of irony.
Paul Turner
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122395
- eISBN:
- 9780191671401
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122395.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
What makes Robert Browning’s poetry exhilarating is not optimism, but strenuous vitality. Life is presented as a challenge. Failure is inevitable but unimportant, so long as the fight goes on. The ...
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What makes Robert Browning’s poetry exhilarating is not optimism, but strenuous vitality. Life is presented as a challenge. Failure is inevitable but unimportant, so long as the fight goes on. The murdered Pompilia, refusing on her deathbed to admit ‘one faint fleck of failure’ in Caponsacchi’s attempt to save her life, expresses almost too literally this never-say-die spirit. Even Andrea del Sarto, the most depressed and defeatist of all Browning’s characters, is last heard planning to paint a vast mural in heaven, and stressing (‘as I choose’) that he is still, in a way, the master of his fate. This sense of irrepressible vitality is conveyed, not just through character, action, or explicit statement, but more immediately by language, versification, and poetic texture. Browning’s very individual style was evidently developed to satisfy the special feeling for ‘fact’ that he shared with Thomas Carlyle, and that drew him towards historical subjects.Less
What makes Robert Browning’s poetry exhilarating is not optimism, but strenuous vitality. Life is presented as a challenge. Failure is inevitable but unimportant, so long as the fight goes on. The murdered Pompilia, refusing on her deathbed to admit ‘one faint fleck of failure’ in Caponsacchi’s attempt to save her life, expresses almost too literally this never-say-die spirit. Even Andrea del Sarto, the most depressed and defeatist of all Browning’s characters, is last heard planning to paint a vast mural in heaven, and stressing (‘as I choose’) that he is still, in a way, the master of his fate. This sense of irrepressible vitality is conveyed, not just through character, action, or explicit statement, but more immediately by language, versification, and poetic texture. Browning’s very individual style was evidently developed to satisfy the special feeling for ‘fact’ that he shared with Thomas Carlyle, and that drew him towards historical subjects.
Juliette Atkinson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199572137
- eISBN:
- 9780191722967
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572137.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter considers in detail the meaning and power attributed by the Victorians to ‘hero‐worship’. The endless debates devoted to the topic in periodicals reveal that there was little consensus ...
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This chapter considers in detail the meaning and power attributed by the Victorians to ‘hero‐worship’. The endless debates devoted to the topic in periodicals reveal that there was little consensus on the subject, which in turn opened up the boundaries of biography. Much of the dissent on the subject can be attributed to the contributions of Thomas Carlyle: Carlyle undoubtedly fuelled the nineteenth‐century fascination with ‘Great Men’, but his lectures On Heroes, Hero‐Worship, and The Heroic in History, historical works, and biographical essays indicate that he was equally attracted to ‘the noble silent men’. Carlyle demonstrated the historical and artistic power of such lives, and in doing so influenced numerous biographers. One of these was Samuel Smiles, whose works of collective biography reveal a similar tendency to vacillate between the appeal of famous and unknown men.Less
This chapter considers in detail the meaning and power attributed by the Victorians to ‘hero‐worship’. The endless debates devoted to the topic in periodicals reveal that there was little consensus on the subject, which in turn opened up the boundaries of biography. Much of the dissent on the subject can be attributed to the contributions of Thomas Carlyle: Carlyle undoubtedly fuelled the nineteenth‐century fascination with ‘Great Men’, but his lectures On Heroes, Hero‐Worship, and The Heroic in History, historical works, and biographical essays indicate that he was equally attracted to ‘the noble silent men’. Carlyle demonstrated the historical and artistic power of such lives, and in doing so influenced numerous biographers. One of these was Samuel Smiles, whose works of collective biography reveal a similar tendency to vacillate between the appeal of famous and unknown men.
Juliette Atkinson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199572137
- eISBN:
- 9780191722967
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572137.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter considers the biographies of men who had somehow failed. Like Ruskin, Browning, and Eliot, who each developed an ‘aesthetic of failure’, the biographers considered here cast failure in a ...
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This chapter considers the biographies of men who had somehow failed. Like Ruskin, Browning, and Eliot, who each developed an ‘aesthetic of failure’, the biographers considered here cast failure in a heroic or positive light. In The Life of John Sterling (1851), Carlyle used biography to protect his ‘noble’ subject from an unsympathetic public. Sterling's life taps into a broader Victorian fascination with the lives of charismatic men who had died young and whose personal influence gave them a role more often associated with female lives. Oliphant also depicts a life of heroic failure in her Life of Edward Irving (1862), where she also voices private grief. Lucas's biography of Bernard Barton (1893) treasures the subject's mediocrity as a sign of personal worth. These works reveal that despite its ostensibly publicizing function, biography was used as a criticism of, and shield from, a distasteful public sphereLess
This chapter considers the biographies of men who had somehow failed. Like Ruskin, Browning, and Eliot, who each developed an ‘aesthetic of failure’, the biographers considered here cast failure in a heroic or positive light. In The Life of John Sterling (1851), Carlyle used biography to protect his ‘noble’ subject from an unsympathetic public. Sterling's life taps into a broader Victorian fascination with the lives of charismatic men who had died young and whose personal influence gave them a role more often associated with female lives. Oliphant also depicts a life of heroic failure in her Life of Edward Irving (1862), where she also voices private grief. Lucas's biography of Bernard Barton (1893) treasures the subject's mediocrity as a sign of personal worth. These works reveal that despite its ostensibly publicizing function, biography was used as a criticism of, and shield from, a distasteful public sphere
James Treadwell
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199262977
- eISBN:
- 9780191718724
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262977.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
The word ‘autobiography’ is a late 18th-century coinage; but by 1834 Carlyle referred to ‘these Autobiographical times of ours’. The chapter describes the debate over the nature and propriety of what ...
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The word ‘autobiography’ is a late 18th-century coinage; but by 1834 Carlyle referred to ‘these Autobiographical times of ours’. The chapter describes the debate over the nature and propriety of what was felt at the time to be a newly prominent way of writing. From Dr. Johnson's 1750 essay on biography to an 1829 article by Mary Busk in Blackwood's, the chapter analyses some important instances of contemporary commentary on autobiography by critics and reviewers. While the commentators agree on the principles that would make autobiographical writing valuable, their prescriptive ideals prove difficult to maintain. The act of reading autobiography provokes confusions and missed expectations, which turn out to be crucial to the period's emerging sense of what autobiographical writing actually is.Less
The word ‘autobiography’ is a late 18th-century coinage; but by 1834 Carlyle referred to ‘these Autobiographical times of ours’. The chapter describes the debate over the nature and propriety of what was felt at the time to be a newly prominent way of writing. From Dr. Johnson's 1750 essay on biography to an 1829 article by Mary Busk in Blackwood's, the chapter analyses some important instances of contemporary commentary on autobiography by critics and reviewers. While the commentators agree on the principles that would make autobiographical writing valuable, their prescriptive ideals prove difficult to maintain. The act of reading autobiography provokes confusions and missed expectations, which turn out to be crucial to the period's emerging sense of what autobiographical writing actually is.
James Treadwell
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199262977
- eISBN:
- 9780191718724
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262977.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter looks at occasions in a variety of Romantic-period texts when they consider themselves as autobiographies, or address the moment when self-writing becomes public. There is a particular ...
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This chapter looks at occasions in a variety of Romantic-period texts when they consider themselves as autobiographies, or address the moment when self-writing becomes public. There is a particular interest in apologetic or defensive positions; at such moments, autobiographical writing reflects the uncertain status of the genre in the literary public sphere. Instances are read in works by Carlyle, Wordsworth, Wollstonecraft, Catherine Cary, Percival Stockdale, Thomas Scott, and others. The chapter ends by suggesting that autobiographical acts in the period are best understood as transactions; all self-writing is engaged in negotiating the conditions under which it is published and read.Less
This chapter looks at occasions in a variety of Romantic-period texts when they consider themselves as autobiographies, or address the moment when self-writing becomes public. There is a particular interest in apologetic or defensive positions; at such moments, autobiographical writing reflects the uncertain status of the genre in the literary public sphere. Instances are read in works by Carlyle, Wordsworth, Wollstonecraft, Catherine Cary, Percival Stockdale, Thomas Scott, and others. The chapter ends by suggesting that autobiographical acts in the period are best understood as transactions; all self-writing is engaged in negotiating the conditions under which it is published and read.
Richard Tuck
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199248148
- eISBN:
- 9780191697715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248148.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This book is based on the Carlyle Lectures delivered at Oxford University in the Hilary Term 1991. The Carlyle Lectures were an attempt to characterise the relationship between the modern, liberal ...
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This book is based on the Carlyle Lectures delivered at Oxford University in the Hilary Term 1991. The Carlyle Lectures were an attempt to characterise the relationship between the modern, liberal political theories of the seventeenth century — the theories which rested on the concept of natural rights — and the humanist political theories of the previous century. The study in this book has Thomas Hobbes as its central character. It was Hobbes above all who made clear the relationship between humanism and natural rights, and who demonstrated the link between the older jurisprudence of war and the new political theory. But for many historians of this subject, Hobbes has seemed to be anomalous — a critic of mainstream rights theories rather than their best exponent.Less
This book is based on the Carlyle Lectures delivered at Oxford University in the Hilary Term 1991. The Carlyle Lectures were an attempt to characterise the relationship between the modern, liberal political theories of the seventeenth century — the theories which rested on the concept of natural rights — and the humanist political theories of the previous century. The study in this book has Thomas Hobbes as its central character. It was Hobbes above all who made clear the relationship between humanism and natural rights, and who demonstrated the link between the older jurisprudence of war and the new political theory. But for many historians of this subject, Hobbes has seemed to be anomalous — a critic of mainstream rights theories rather than their best exponent.
Charles Capper
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195396324
- eISBN:
- 9780199852703
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195396324.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Filled with dramatic, ironic, and sometimes tragic turns, this superb biography captures the story of one of America’s most extraordinary figures, producing at once the best life of Margaret Fuller ...
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Filled with dramatic, ironic, and sometimes tragic turns, this superb biography captures the story of one of America’s most extraordinary figures, producing at once the best life of Margaret Fuller ever written, and one of the great biographies in American history. In this book, Volume II, the author illuminates Fuller’s “public years”, focusing on her struggles to establish her identity as an influential intellectual woman in the Romantic Age. He brings to life Fuller’s dramatic mixture of inward struggles, intimate social life, and deep engagements with the movements of her time. He describes how Fuller struggled to reconcile high avant-garde cultural ideals and Romantic critical methods with democratic social and political commitments, and how she strove to articulate a cosmopolitan vision for her nation’s culture and politics. The author also offers fresh and often startlingly new treatments of Fuller’s friendships with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, and Giuseppe Mazzini, in addition to many others.Less
Filled with dramatic, ironic, and sometimes tragic turns, this superb biography captures the story of one of America’s most extraordinary figures, producing at once the best life of Margaret Fuller ever written, and one of the great biographies in American history. In this book, Volume II, the author illuminates Fuller’s “public years”, focusing on her struggles to establish her identity as an influential intellectual woman in the Romantic Age. He brings to life Fuller’s dramatic mixture of inward struggles, intimate social life, and deep engagements with the movements of her time. He describes how Fuller struggled to reconcile high avant-garde cultural ideals and Romantic critical methods with democratic social and political commitments, and how she strove to articulate a cosmopolitan vision for her nation’s culture and politics. The author also offers fresh and often startlingly new treatments of Fuller’s friendships with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, and Giuseppe Mazzini, in addition to many others.
