J. Rixey Ruffin
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195326512
- eISBN:
- 9780199870417
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326512.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
If the factionalization of the 1780s allowed the coexistence in Bentley of both liberalism and libertarianism, the partisanship of the 1790s would force him into the political camp of one or the ...
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If the factionalization of the 1780s allowed the coexistence in Bentley of both liberalism and libertarianism, the partisanship of the 1790s would force him into the political camp of one or the other. Unlike his liberal peers, Bentley would become a Democratic Republican, or, more loosely, a Jeffersonian. This shift began in 1785 with the arrival of William Hazlitt, an English Unitarian and member of the circle of English Rational Dissenters that moved around Joseph Priestley. Hazlitt convinced both Bentley and James Freeman, rector of Boston's King's Chapel, of Unitarianism (this was in fact the beginning of Bentley's Socinianism, a term used synonymously), and Bentley and Freeman began participating in a transatlantic network of disseminating Unitarian pamphlets into the public sphere. They met only casual resistance for the first few years, but then more rigorous resistance after the beginning of the French Revolution. After 1789, that is, Jacobinism and Unitarianism merged in the public mind, and supporters of one were linked with supporters of the other. In 1791 when a Church and King mob in Birmingham, England, destroyed Priestley's property, Bentley in Salem came to believe that the path to rational liberation was being blocked not so much by the ignorant masses themselves as by the liberal elites who were encouraging those masses.Less
If the factionalization of the 1780s allowed the coexistence in Bentley of both liberalism and libertarianism, the partisanship of the 1790s would force him into the political camp of one or the other. Unlike his liberal peers, Bentley would become a Democratic Republican, or, more loosely, a Jeffersonian. This shift began in 1785 with the arrival of William Hazlitt, an English Unitarian and member of the circle of English Rational Dissenters that moved around Joseph Priestley. Hazlitt convinced both Bentley and James Freeman, rector of Boston's King's Chapel, of Unitarianism (this was in fact the beginning of Bentley's Socinianism, a term used synonymously), and Bentley and Freeman began participating in a transatlantic network of disseminating Unitarian pamphlets into the public sphere. They met only casual resistance for the first few years, but then more rigorous resistance after the beginning of the French Revolution. After 1789, that is, Jacobinism and Unitarianism merged in the public mind, and supporters of one were linked with supporters of the other. In 1791 when a Church and King mob in Birmingham, England, destroyed Priestley's property, Bentley in Salem came to believe that the path to rational liberation was being blocked not so much by the ignorant masses themselves as by the liberal elites who were encouraging those masses.
Richard Cronin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582532
- eISBN:
- 9780191722929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582532.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
It was a scandalous age, an age in which the Queen was, at the instigation of her husband, tried before the House of Lords for adultery. This chapter explores the disruption of the boundary ...
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It was a scandalous age, an age in which the Queen was, at the instigation of her husband, tried before the House of Lords for adultery. This chapter explores the disruption of the boundary separating the public from the private that produces scandal, focusing on Byron's separation crisis, Hazlitt's publication of Liber Amoris, and Edmund Kean's trial for crim. con. Such scandals are inevitable when the major cultural figures such as Kean and Byron generated such intense public interest by refusing clearly to distinguish between their private and their public selves, between the performer and the role.Less
It was a scandalous age, an age in which the Queen was, at the instigation of her husband, tried before the House of Lords for adultery. This chapter explores the disruption of the boundary separating the public from the private that produces scandal, focusing on Byron's separation crisis, Hazlitt's publication of Liber Amoris, and Edmund Kean's trial for crim. con. Such scandals are inevitable when the major cultural figures such as Kean and Byron generated such intense public interest by refusing clearly to distinguish between their private and their public selves, between the performer and the role.
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.
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.
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/9780195376128.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
With its representation of grain shortages, conflicts between the populace and the patricians, and the dependence of political leaders on the approval of the people, Coriolanus was a most topical ...
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With its representation of grain shortages, conflicts between the populace and the patricians, and the dependence of political leaders on the approval of the people, Coriolanus was a most topical play for Romantic period audiences. This chapter compares productions by John Philip Kemble, who used the role to portray the rightness of patrician rule in a time of popular unrest, with that of Edmund Kean, who returned the scenery to the mud huts of early Rome and diminished the haughty dominance of the central character. It then evaluates Hazlitt's claim, made initially in a review of Coriolanus, that imagination is an “aristocratical faculty.” The performance history of Coriolanus, the chapter concludes, provides the crucial subtext for Hazlitt's Romantic theorization of the imagination and helps us to understand Romantic anxieties about Shakespearean performance generally.Less
With its representation of grain shortages, conflicts between the populace and the patricians, and the dependence of political leaders on the approval of the people, Coriolanus was a most topical play for Romantic period audiences. This chapter compares productions by John Philip Kemble, who used the role to portray the rightness of patrician rule in a time of popular unrest, with that of Edmund Kean, who returned the scenery to the mud huts of early Rome and diminished the haughty dominance of the central character. It then evaluates Hazlitt's claim, made initially in a review of Coriolanus, that imagination is an “aristocratical faculty.” The performance history of Coriolanus, the chapter concludes, provides the crucial subtext for Hazlitt's Romantic theorization of the imagination and helps us to understand Romantic anxieties about Shakespearean performance generally.
Andrew Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199234745
- eISBN:
- 9780191715747
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199234745.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
This chapter explores the meaning of concepts such as subjectivity, imagination, and mimesis that from the late 1820s provided a counter-current to the classical ideal. Although Pushkin was ...
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This chapter explores the meaning of concepts such as subjectivity, imagination, and mimesis that from the late 1820s provided a counter-current to the classical ideal. Although Pushkin was inherently conservative as a lyricist, he understood how the classical could become the Romantic. His approach to innovation as a type of creative recycling met the Romantic revolutionary ideal halfway. But from 1826, the path to Romantic subjectivity through imagination also lay open to Pushkin. Issues once given little urgency in his poetry became more critical from 1826. It is shown that the transition to a greater Romantic lyric was tentative, and that Pushkin only intermittently transposed his reading about the imagination and subjectivity into poems that are statements about the creative mind.Less
This chapter explores the meaning of concepts such as subjectivity, imagination, and mimesis that from the late 1820s provided a counter-current to the classical ideal. Although Pushkin was inherently conservative as a lyricist, he understood how the classical could become the Romantic. His approach to innovation as a type of creative recycling met the Romantic revolutionary ideal halfway. But from 1826, the path to Romantic subjectivity through imagination also lay open to Pushkin. Issues once given little urgency in his poetry became more critical from 1826. It is shown that the transition to a greater Romantic lyric was tentative, and that Pushkin only intermittently transposed his reading about the imagination and subjectivity into poems that are statements about the creative mind.
John Lee
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198185048
- eISBN:
- 9780191674433
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198185048.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This book offers a new approach to the discussion of English Renaissance literary subjectivity. Dissatisfied with much New Historicist and Cultural Materialistic criticism, it attempts to trace the ...
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This book offers a new approach to the discussion of English Renaissance literary subjectivity. Dissatisfied with much New Historicist and Cultural Materialistic criticism, it attempts to trace the history of the controversies of self. William Hazlitt emerges as a pioneering figure in a tradition of literary criticism, which this book tries to advance. Drawing on the personal construct theory of George A. Kelly, and on the moral theory of Alasdair MacIntyre, the textual ways are traced by which ‘that within’ Hamlet is constructed. In an argument that challenges some of the founding propositions of New Historicist and Cultural Materialist practice, the Prince is seen to have a self-constituting, as opposed to a self-fashioning, sense of self. This sense of self is neither essentialist nor transhistorical; using the work of Charles Taylor, the play is seen to be exploring a Montaignesque, as opposed to Cartesian, notion of subjectivity. The controversies of self are, in fact, an issue within Shakespeare's play; and if the notion of Folio and Quarto Princes is allowed, it may even be at issue within the play. Hamlet debates our debate.Less
This book offers a new approach to the discussion of English Renaissance literary subjectivity. Dissatisfied with much New Historicist and Cultural Materialistic criticism, it attempts to trace the history of the controversies of self. William Hazlitt emerges as a pioneering figure in a tradition of literary criticism, which this book tries to advance. Drawing on the personal construct theory of George A. Kelly, and on the moral theory of Alasdair MacIntyre, the textual ways are traced by which ‘that within’ Hamlet is constructed. In an argument that challenges some of the founding propositions of New Historicist and Cultural Materialist practice, the Prince is seen to have a self-constituting, as opposed to a self-fashioning, sense of self. This sense of self is neither essentialist nor transhistorical; using the work of Charles Taylor, the play is seen to be exploring a Montaignesque, as opposed to Cartesian, notion of subjectivity. The controversies of self are, in fact, an issue within Shakespeare's play; and if the notion of Folio and Quarto Princes is allowed, it may even be at issue within the play. Hamlet debates our debate.
Tom Lockwood
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199280780
- eISBN:
- 9780191712890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199280780.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter takes as its focus William Gifford's 1816, nine-volume edition of The Works of Ben Jonson, offering a historicized account that seeks to understand how the conditions of its making ...
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This chapter takes as its focus William Gifford's 1816, nine-volume edition of The Works of Ben Jonson, offering a historicized account that seeks to understand how the conditions of its making influenced not only its methods but its later reception and influence. The chapter argues that Gifford's edition presented its readers with a social Jonson; and that Gifford, having conceived of the edition in terms that ally themselves closely with, and were earlier formed by, a Jonsonian understanding of friendship, was himself the beneficiary of a network of later literary friends, who provided him with help in the making of, and material vitally with which to make, the edition. The chapter then traces the sources of the manuscripts and books on which Gifford drew, as well as his own long correspondence with Octavius Gilchrist, drawing from this previously unpublished material a new picture of his working practices from which is derived an account of why the edition mattered then, and matters now today. Taking as test cases Gifford's treatment of Jonson's biography (including the Conversations with Drummond), and his handling of The Underwood, Jonson's final, posthumously-published collection of poetry, the chapter explores the way in which Jonsonian models of friendship can be read against and within the edition's editorial practice. The later part of the chapter then explores the hostile treatment that Gifford's edition attracted on publication, surveying its early reviews as a way of setting up a long engagement with the most important of Gifford's critics: William Hazlitt. In Hazlitt's account of Jonson, the chapter argues, we see not only an explicitly hostile political response to Gifford's alignment of Jonson with a particular mode of Regency Tory politics, but a vivid imaginative engagement with Jonson's writings, chief among them his Roman tragedy, Sejanus. This material begins to set up the interests of the book's second part: allusion and imitation.Less
This chapter takes as its focus William Gifford's 1816, nine-volume edition of The Works of Ben Jonson, offering a historicized account that seeks to understand how the conditions of its making influenced not only its methods but its later reception and influence. The chapter argues that Gifford's edition presented its readers with a social Jonson; and that Gifford, having conceived of the edition in terms that ally themselves closely with, and were earlier formed by, a Jonsonian understanding of friendship, was himself the beneficiary of a network of later literary friends, who provided him with help in the making of, and material vitally with which to make, the edition. The chapter then traces the sources of the manuscripts and books on which Gifford drew, as well as his own long correspondence with Octavius Gilchrist, drawing from this previously unpublished material a new picture of his working practices from which is derived an account of why the edition mattered then, and matters now today. Taking as test cases Gifford's treatment of Jonson's biography (including the Conversations with Drummond), and his handling of The Underwood, Jonson's final, posthumously-published collection of poetry, the chapter explores the way in which Jonsonian models of friendship can be read against and within the edition's editorial practice. The later part of the chapter then explores the hostile treatment that Gifford's edition attracted on publication, surveying its early reviews as a way of setting up a long engagement with the most important of Gifford's critics: William Hazlitt. In Hazlitt's account of Jonson, the chapter argues, we see not only an explicitly hostile political response to Gifford's alignment of Jonson with a particular mode of Regency Tory politics, but a vivid imaginative engagement with Jonson's writings, chief among them his Roman tragedy, Sejanus. This material begins to set up the interests of the book's second part: allusion and imitation.
Uttara Natarajan
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184379
- eISBN:
- 9780191674235
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184379.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Criticism/Theory
The ‘only pretension, of which I am tenacious,’ declares William Hazlitt in The Plain Speaker, ‘is that of being a metaphysician’; yet up till now his metaphysics, and particularly what is here ...
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The ‘only pretension, of which I am tenacious,’ declares William Hazlitt in The Plain Speaker, ‘is that of being a metaphysician’; yet up till now his metaphysics, and particularly what is here identified as his ‘power principle’, have not been examined in detail. This book identifies the metaphysical Hazlitt within the other and better-known Hazlitt, long acknowledged as a master of ‘the familiar style’ and more recently celebrated for the fierceness and intensity of his political prose. Studying his development of the power principle as a counter to the pleasure principle of the Utilitarians, this book examines the revelation of power in his philosophy of discourse, his account of imaginative structure, his theory of genius, and his moral theory, and asserts the tenacity of this principle throughout his work. Disseminated through the range of his writings, Hazlitt's metaphysics becomes a metaphysics of power in more senses than one: it is both argument and example, itself manifesting that force of human intellect that it seeks to explicate.Less
The ‘only pretension, of which I am tenacious,’ declares William Hazlitt in The Plain Speaker, ‘is that of being a metaphysician’; yet up till now his metaphysics, and particularly what is here identified as his ‘power principle’, have not been examined in detail. This book identifies the metaphysical Hazlitt within the other and better-known Hazlitt, long acknowledged as a master of ‘the familiar style’ and more recently celebrated for the fierceness and intensity of his political prose. Studying his development of the power principle as a counter to the pleasure principle of the Utilitarians, this book examines the revelation of power in his philosophy of discourse, his account of imaginative structure, his theory of genius, and his moral theory, and asserts the tenacity of this principle throughout his work. Disseminated through the range of his writings, Hazlitt's metaphysics becomes a metaphysics of power in more senses than one: it is both argument and example, itself manifesting that force of human intellect that it seeks to explicate.
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/9780199262977.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter explores how the theme of the ‘self’ as an autonomous and expressive agent — the ‘Romantic’ self — is produced in texts. A case study of sets of works by Elizabeth Gooch and William ...
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This chapter explores how the theme of the ‘self’ as an autonomous and expressive agent — the ‘Romantic’ self — is produced in texts. A case study of sets of works by Elizabeth Gooch and William Henry Ireland demonstrates that autobiography invokes a self which resists or transcends the transactions in which it is enmeshed. In courtesan autobiographies and slave autobiographies, the rhetorical effects of expressive subjectivity are also set in opposition to the transactions that determine the self and its text. This idea is developed in readings of two of the master-texts of ‘Romantic’ subjectivity, De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Hazlitt's Liber Amoris.Less
This chapter explores how the theme of the ‘self’ as an autonomous and expressive agent — the ‘Romantic’ self — is produced in texts. A case study of sets of works by Elizabeth Gooch and William Henry Ireland demonstrates that autobiography invokes a self which resists or transcends the transactions in which it is enmeshed. In courtesan autobiographies and slave autobiographies, the rhetorical effects of expressive subjectivity are also set in opposition to the transactions that determine the self and its text. This idea is developed in readings of two of the master-texts of ‘Romantic’ subjectivity, De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Hazlitt's Liber Amoris.
Richard Cronin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582532
- eISBN:
- 9780191722929
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582532.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book begins with two fatal duels, as the best introduction to a literary period best defined by its antagonisms – between England and Scotland, Whigs and Tories, men and women, and between poets ...
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This book begins with two fatal duels, as the best introduction to a literary period best defined by its antagonisms – between England and Scotland, Whigs and Tories, men and women, and between poets and their critics. It covers the years in which publishing became an industry serving a mass readership, and focuses on the three publishing phenomena of the age: the novels of Walter Scott, Byron's Don Juan, and the new literary magazines. It attempts a radical reconfiguration of our understanding of literary culture in the years after Waterloo.Less
This book begins with two fatal duels, as the best introduction to a literary period best defined by its antagonisms – between England and Scotland, Whigs and Tories, men and women, and between poets and their critics. It covers the years in which publishing became an industry serving a mass readership, and focuses on the three publishing phenomena of the age: the novels of Walter Scott, Byron's Don Juan, and the new literary magazines. It attempts a radical reconfiguration of our understanding of literary culture in the years after Waterloo.
Richard Cronin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582532
- eISBN:
- 9780191722929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582532.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The chapter focuses on the unprecedented expansion in both the production and consumption of print that marked these years. Writers who knew themselves to be addressing an anonymous mass readership ...
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The chapter focuses on the unprecedented expansion in both the production and consumption of print that marked these years. Writers who knew themselves to be addressing an anonymous mass readership responded by developing in prose or in verse a manner that suggested intimate address. This chapter seeks to explain why a mass‐produced literature directed to an anonymous readership should prize so highly the local, and cultivate so assiduously the intimate.Less
The chapter focuses on the unprecedented expansion in both the production and consumption of print that marked these years. Writers who knew themselves to be addressing an anonymous mass readership responded by developing in prose or in verse a manner that suggested intimate address. This chapter seeks to explain why a mass‐produced literature directed to an anonymous readership should prize so highly the local, and cultivate so assiduously the intimate.
Richard Cronin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582532
- eISBN:
- 9780191722929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582532.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The chapter identifies this as the period when literature finally established itself as a professional occupation rather than a gentlemanly vocation. Literary animosities were so violent in part ...
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The chapter identifies this as the period when literature finally established itself as a professional occupation rather than a gentlemanly vocation. Literary animosities were so violent in part because this was a pivotal moment in which it might still be felt that to write for money was to sacrifice any claim to gentlemanly status. This chapter investigates this as a period in which writers both investigated and exhibited class insecurities.Less
The chapter identifies this as the period when literature finally established itself as a professional occupation rather than a gentlemanly vocation. Literary animosities were so violent in part because this was a pivotal moment in which it might still be felt that to write for money was to sacrifice any claim to gentlemanly status. This chapter investigates this as a period in which writers both investigated and exhibited class insecurities.
Richard Cronin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582532
- eISBN:
- 9780191722929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582532.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The chapter describes the determined and flamboyant campaign in the decade after Waterloo to reassert the masculine character of the republic of letters which, many male writers seemed to believe, ...
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The chapter describes the determined and flamboyant campaign in the decade after Waterloo to reassert the masculine character of the republic of letters which, many male writers seemed to believe, had been compromised by the dominant role of women as consumers of literature and their increasingly important role as producers. Walter Scott and his followers masculinized the novel. Byron produced in Don Juan a poem that respectable women felt that they could not admit to reading, and even Keats declared that he wished to write only for men.Less
The chapter describes the determined and flamboyant campaign in the decade after Waterloo to reassert the masculine character of the republic of letters which, many male writers seemed to believe, had been compromised by the dominant role of women as consumers of literature and their increasingly important role as producers. Walter Scott and his followers masculinized the novel. Byron produced in Don Juan a poem that respectable women felt that they could not admit to reading, and even Keats declared that he wished to write only for men.
Richard Cronin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582532
- eISBN:
- 9780191722929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582532.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The book concludes by examining the relationship between the kind of writing that the work has explored, the kind that De Quincey calls ‘writing for the current press’, and that other kind of ...
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The book concludes by examining the relationship between the kind of writing that the work has explored, the kind that De Quincey calls ‘writing for the current press’, and that other kind of writing, best exemplified by Wordsworth's poems, which has been more commonly associated with the Romantic period. It is, like the relationship between duellists, an antagonistic but an ambiguously antagonistic relationship, for duellists come together in a murderous encounter through which each ratifies the social standing of the other. The book concludes that the two kinds of writing are similarly mutually supporting, and that the canonical status since accorded to those writers now identified as ‘Romantics’ owed more than has been allowed to the fury with which their work was attacked.Less
The book concludes by examining the relationship between the kind of writing that the work has explored, the kind that De Quincey calls ‘writing for the current press’, and that other kind of writing, best exemplified by Wordsworth's poems, which has been more commonly associated with the Romantic period. It is, like the relationship between duellists, an antagonistic but an ambiguously antagonistic relationship, for duellists come together in a murderous encounter through which each ratifies the social standing of the other. The book concludes that the two kinds of writing are similarly mutually supporting, and that the canonical status since accorded to those writers now identified as ‘Romantics’ owed more than has been allowed to the fury with which their work was attacked.
Uttara Natarajan
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184379
- eISBN:
- 9780191674235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184379.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses the creation of a metaphysics of power by Hazlitt. It evaluates Hazlitt's metaphysics of power which reopened the field of enquiry outlined in ‘Romantic idealism’. It notes the ...
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This chapter discusses the creation of a metaphysics of power by Hazlitt. It evaluates Hazlitt's metaphysics of power which reopened the field of enquiry outlined in ‘Romantic idealism’. It notes the ability to occupy without contradiction. Having two contradictory positions is Hazlitt's peculiar gift. The chapter states that Hazlitt's idealism is rendered unique by the form in which it is manifested, the product of a mind that is without contradiction, one which is radical and conservative all at once. His idealism evolved, not from the Germans, but from the empiricist tradition dominant in Britain. His metaphysics is the product of polemical engagement, a process of refuting and undermining the philosophies that he perceived as at once the most influential and the most invidious — the philosophies closest to home.Less
This chapter discusses the creation of a metaphysics of power by Hazlitt. It evaluates Hazlitt's metaphysics of power which reopened the field of enquiry outlined in ‘Romantic idealism’. It notes the ability to occupy without contradiction. Having two contradictory positions is Hazlitt's peculiar gift. The chapter states that Hazlitt's idealism is rendered unique by the form in which it is manifested, the product of a mind that is without contradiction, one which is radical and conservative all at once. His idealism evolved, not from the Germans, but from the empiricist tradition dominant in Britain. His metaphysics is the product of polemical engagement, a process of refuting and undermining the philosophies that he perceived as at once the most influential and the most invidious — the philosophies closest to home.
Uttara Natarajan
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184379
- eISBN:
- 9780191674235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184379.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Criticism/Theory
This chapter provides a summary of Essay on the Principles of Human Action and shows the origins of Hazlitt's critical position, and of the understanding of poetic language which informs that ...
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This chapter provides a summary of Essay on the Principles of Human Action and shows the origins of Hazlitt's critical position, and of the understanding of poetic language which informs that position. It notes that the entire metaphysical basis of Essay on the Principles of Human Action may be summarized as the subordination of the senses to the mind. One can identify Hazlitt's concept of ‘power’ through the independence of the mind from sensory manipulation, or equivalently, from manipulation by the objects of an external material reality. It discusses that the affirmation of innate power is the subtext of Hazlitt's theory of discourse in general, and of poetic discourse in particular. The common ground of poetic and linguistic philosophy can be seen in Hazlitt's understanding of language structure, in which he finds evidence of the formative power of the mind.Less
This chapter provides a summary of Essay on the Principles of Human Action and shows the origins of Hazlitt's critical position, and of the understanding of poetic language which informs that position. It notes that the entire metaphysical basis of Essay on the Principles of Human Action may be summarized as the subordination of the senses to the mind. One can identify Hazlitt's concept of ‘power’ through the independence of the mind from sensory manipulation, or equivalently, from manipulation by the objects of an external material reality. It discusses that the affirmation of innate power is the subtext of Hazlitt's theory of discourse in general, and of poetic discourse in particular. The common ground of poetic and linguistic philosophy can be seen in Hazlitt's understanding of language structure, in which he finds evidence of the formative power of the mind.
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195072389
- eISBN:
- 9780199787982
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195072389.003.0039
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The lessening of Mencken's influence was accompanied by the further decline of The American Mercury. Against slumping financial returns, Mencken decided to resign from the magazine. For various ...
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The lessening of Mencken's influence was accompanied by the further decline of The American Mercury. Against slumping financial returns, Mencken decided to resign from the magazine. For various reasons, resentment against Mencken began to fester in his assistant, Charles Angoff; this nearly exploded when Mencken and Knopf appointed Henry Hazlitt, instead of Angoff, to replace Mencken.Less
The lessening of Mencken's influence was accompanied by the further decline of The American Mercury. Against slumping financial returns, Mencken decided to resign from the magazine. For various reasons, resentment against Mencken began to fester in his assistant, Charles Angoff; this nearly exploded when Mencken and Knopf appointed Henry Hazlitt, instead of Angoff, to replace Mencken.
Jonathan Sachs
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199588541
- eISBN:
- 9780191741845
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588541.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Focusing on the range of meanings assigned to republican Rome and on the process by which Rome is compared to contemporary Britain in contexts ranging from Parliamentary debates to the writings of ...
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Focusing on the range of meanings assigned to republican Rome and on the process by which Rome is compared to contemporary Britain in contexts ranging from Parliamentary debates to the writings of John Thelwall, S. T. Coleridge, Percy Shelly, and William Hazlittt, this chapter demonstrates how the diffusion of historical sense in British Romantic writing reveals the previously neglected relationship between the culture of republican Rome and the development of Romanticism in Britain. Attention to how these diverse figures interpret the legacy of republican Rome suggests that ‘Greece’ and ‘Rome’ were competitive and complementary fascinations; Greece did not replace Rome in the Romantic imagination, but the rise of Hellenism did enable sophisticated distinctions between Greece and Rome. By considering these distinctions, the chapter establishes Rome's crucial role in helping us understand the interpellation of politics and aesthetics in the Romantic period.Less
Focusing on the range of meanings assigned to republican Rome and on the process by which Rome is compared to contemporary Britain in contexts ranging from Parliamentary debates to the writings of John Thelwall, S. T. Coleridge, Percy Shelly, and William Hazlittt, this chapter demonstrates how the diffusion of historical sense in British Romantic writing reveals the previously neglected relationship between the culture of republican Rome and the development of Romanticism in Britain. Attention to how these diverse figures interpret the legacy of republican Rome suggests that ‘Greece’ and ‘Rome’ were competitive and complementary fascinations; Greece did not replace Rome in the Romantic imagination, but the rise of Hellenism did enable sophisticated distinctions between Greece and Rome. By considering these distinctions, the chapter establishes Rome's crucial role in helping us understand the interpellation of politics and aesthetics in the Romantic period.
Lucy Newlyn
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187110
- eISBN:
- 9780191674631
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187110.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter deals with the dialogues and crossings which took place between creativity and criticism in the early 19th century. The chapter explores the implications for the power relations between ...
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This chapter deals with the dialogues and crossings which took place between creativity and criticism in the early 19th century. The chapter explores the implications for the power relations between rival discourses. Having considered ways in which creative-cynical dialectic operates in the most distinguished Romantic poet-critics of the first generation, the chapter concentrates here on its manifestations in the periodical culture on which second-generation Romanticism thrived, when criticism and poetry were apparently at war with each other, but when complex mergings between them were taking place. A number of key texts (among others) Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, William Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb — all of them characteristic of this more self-conscious phase in the rise of criticism — provide focus for discussion along with the ‘pathology’ of high Romanticism.Less
This chapter deals with the dialogues and crossings which took place between creativity and criticism in the early 19th century. The chapter explores the implications for the power relations between rival discourses. Having considered ways in which creative-cynical dialectic operates in the most distinguished Romantic poet-critics of the first generation, the chapter concentrates here on its manifestations in the periodical culture on which second-generation Romanticism thrived, when criticism and poetry were apparently at war with each other, but when complex mergings between them were taking place. A number of key texts (among others) Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, William Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb — all of them characteristic of this more self-conscious phase in the rise of criticism — provide focus for discussion along with the ‘pathology’ of high Romanticism.