Ron Johnston (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197265277
- eISBN:
- 9780191754203
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265277.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This volume collects together lectures by distinguished scholars. One lecture examines medieval religious relics, focusing on what they actually comprised and asking how these paltry items came to be ...
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This volume collects together lectures by distinguished scholars. One lecture examines medieval religious relics, focusing on what they actually comprised and asking how these paltry items came to be so highly valued. Another lecture takes the authentic medieval Welsh literary corpus associated with Owain Glyndwr, consisting in the main of bardic eulogies rather than prophecies, and examines them in their historical context. A lecture on Alexander Pope asks what part Shaftesbury's polite wit, Mandeville's cynicism, and Augustan sentimentalism played in the poetry of England's greatest satirist. Another lecture focuses on the Romantic poets' fascination with the lens-made and projected images that the modern world has come to think of as the virtual image. A further lecture examines the choices made by young musicians in Renaissance Italy. The next lecture examines how the paradoxical doctrine of ‘the one and the multiple’ was translated into visual language in Chinese Buddhist art. In some cases, groups related to certain numbers bearing metaphorical significances; while in others, objects were simply replicated in large numbers to create a sense of awe. The final lecture explores the way the natural history of the Americas was exported to 16th-century northern European scientists and how they reacted intellectually and politically.Less
This volume collects together lectures by distinguished scholars. One lecture examines medieval religious relics, focusing on what they actually comprised and asking how these paltry items came to be so highly valued. Another lecture takes the authentic medieval Welsh literary corpus associated with Owain Glyndwr, consisting in the main of bardic eulogies rather than prophecies, and examines them in their historical context. A lecture on Alexander Pope asks what part Shaftesbury's polite wit, Mandeville's cynicism, and Augustan sentimentalism played in the poetry of England's greatest satirist. Another lecture focuses on the Romantic poets' fascination with the lens-made and projected images that the modern world has come to think of as the virtual image. A further lecture examines the choices made by young musicians in Renaissance Italy. The next lecture examines how the paradoxical doctrine of ‘the one and the multiple’ was translated into visual language in Chinese Buddhist art. In some cases, groups related to certain numbers bearing metaphorical significances; while in others, objects were simply replicated in large numbers to create a sense of awe. The final lecture explores the way the natural history of the Americas was exported to 16th-century northern European scientists and how they reacted intellectually and politically.
David Fairer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264706
- eISBN:
- 9780191734557
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264706.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Milton Studies
According to Joseph Wittreich, Romantic poets empowered Milton by making him whole again through their readings of his poetry in the future tense, so that poems emerging from one moment of crisis ...
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According to Joseph Wittreich, Romantic poets empowered Milton by making him whole again through their readings of his poetry in the future tense, so that poems emerging from one moment of crisis could reflect upon and explain another crisis in history when, once again, terror and tyranny overruled. In the Romantic period, it became a commonplace to link the prophetic Milton to the Romantic poets. This chapter discusses Milton and the Romantics. It examines the Romanticist readings of Paradise Lost and its influence in the writings of the Romantic poets. The chapter examines his tradition of prophecy and oppositional rhetoric, which found its way into the works of the Romantics.Less
According to Joseph Wittreich, Romantic poets empowered Milton by making him whole again through their readings of his poetry in the future tense, so that poems emerging from one moment of crisis could reflect upon and explain another crisis in history when, once again, terror and tyranny overruled. In the Romantic period, it became a commonplace to link the prophetic Milton to the Romantic poets. This chapter discusses Milton and the Romantics. It examines the Romanticist readings of Paradise Lost and its influence in the writings of the Romantic poets. The chapter examines his tradition of prophecy and oppositional rhetoric, which found its way into the works of the Romantics.
Julian North
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199571987
- eISBN:
- 9780191722363
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571987.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
This chapter looks at the encounter between biography and the Romantic poet. It focuses on the hostile responses to the genre from Coleridge (‘A Prefatory Observation on Modern Biography’ (1810) ) ...
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This chapter looks at the encounter between biography and the Romantic poet. It focuses on the hostile responses to the genre from Coleridge (‘A Prefatory Observation on Modern Biography’ (1810) ) and Wordsworth (‘Essays upon Epitaphs’ (1810) and A Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns (1816) ), in the context of what Lucy Newlyn has called their ‘anxiety of reception’. It explores the competition between poetry and biography in the literary marketplace between 1820 and 1840, and looks atways in which biography was celebrated by Hazlitt, Carlyle, and others at the period, as a democratizing form, with the capacity to create a uniquely intimate relationship between reader and subject.Less
This chapter looks at the encounter between biography and the Romantic poet. It focuses on the hostile responses to the genre from Coleridge (‘A Prefatory Observation on Modern Biography’ (1810) ) and Wordsworth (‘Essays upon Epitaphs’ (1810) and A Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns (1816) ), in the context of what Lucy Newlyn has called their ‘anxiety of reception’. It explores the competition between poetry and biography in the literary marketplace between 1820 and 1840, and looks atways in which biography was celebrated by Hazlitt, Carlyle, and others at the period, as a democratizing form, with the capacity to create a uniquely intimate relationship between reader and subject.
Richard Lansdown
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112525
- eISBN:
- 9780191670794
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112525.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses a comparison of Byron's historical plays with those written by his major English poetic contemporaries, including Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. An examination of ...
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This chapter discusses a comparison of Byron's historical plays with those written by his major English poetic contemporaries, including Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. An examination of some of the factors lying behind the Romantic poets' seemingly misguided obsession with the writing of drama is also included in this chapter.Less
This chapter discusses a comparison of Byron's historical plays with those written by his major English poetic contemporaries, including Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. An examination of some of the factors lying behind the Romantic poets' seemingly misguided obsession with the writing of drama is also included in this chapter.
Julian North
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199571987
- eISBN:
- 9780191722363
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571987.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
The Introduction argues that biography was a powerful force in shaping the myth of ‘the Romantic poet’ in the nineteenth century and beyond, but that the Lives of Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, ...
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The Introduction argues that biography was a powerful force in shaping the myth of ‘the Romantic poet’ in the nineteenth century and beyond, but that the Lives of Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hemans, and Landon, flourished in a a competitive and critical relationship with their subjects. Modern critics have devalued biography in relation to autobiography, and have seen Victorian biographies of the Romantic poets as setting out to make them respectable. This chapter responds by introducing the term ‘domestication’, as implying something more than a simplistic process of ‘taming’ or making ‘civilized’. The first biographers of the Romantic poets set themselves up as mediators of genius to the reading public. They claimed that to domesticate was to democratize. To give the intimate view of genius was to question the exclusivity of cultural production that withholds itself from general consumption.Less
The Introduction argues that biography was a powerful force in shaping the myth of ‘the Romantic poet’ in the nineteenth century and beyond, but that the Lives of Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hemans, and Landon, flourished in a a competitive and critical relationship with their subjects. Modern critics have devalued biography in relation to autobiography, and have seen Victorian biographies of the Romantic poets as setting out to make them respectable. This chapter responds by introducing the term ‘domestication’, as implying something more than a simplistic process of ‘taming’ or making ‘civilized’. The first biographers of the Romantic poets set themselves up as mediators of genius to the reading public. They claimed that to domesticate was to democratize. To give the intimate view of genius was to question the exclusivity of cultural production that withholds itself from general consumption.
Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160658
- eISBN:
- 9781400852598
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160658.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter traces the emergence of a new poetry that presents its credentials as lying not with any preexisting literary or national tradition, but with the genius of the individual poet. Despite ...
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This chapter traces the emergence of a new poetry that presents its credentials as lying not with any preexisting literary or national tradition, but with the genius of the individual poet. Despite the real success of the volumes published in this spirit, the poet is portrayed, like Moses abandoned by his people, as having no public. The collective “other” that might afford him recognition is absent, and in the words of Victor Hugo, his was a voice crying in the wilderness, and singing to the deaf. The new poets thus enter the literary field announcing in advance that they will go unheard by a world that is fundamentally hostile.Less
This chapter traces the emergence of a new poetry that presents its credentials as lying not with any preexisting literary or national tradition, but with the genius of the individual poet. Despite the real success of the volumes published in this spirit, the poet is portrayed, like Moses abandoned by his people, as having no public. The collective “other” that might afford him recognition is absent, and in the words of Victor Hugo, his was a voice crying in the wilderness, and singing to the deaf. The new poets thus enter the literary field announcing in advance that they will go unheard by a world that is fundamentally hostile.
Murray G. H. Pittock
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263037
- eISBN:
- 9780191734007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263037.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This lecture discusses Robert Burns, a poet who dwelt on the early phase of the poem ‘Resolution and Independence’. It examines the critical introspection that has tended to exclude Burns from an ...
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This lecture discusses Robert Burns, a poet who dwelt on the early phase of the poem ‘Resolution and Independence’. It examines the critical introspection that has tended to exclude Burns from an increasingly narrow definition of Romanticism since 1945. The lecture presents an argument that Burns' concerns are in many respects not those of the ‘peasant poet’ or a particularist Scottish writer, but in dialogue with the other major British Romantic poets. Finally, it demonstrates that Burns' self-consciousness, poetic flexibility, and playful use of category and genre demand a deeper understanding of the nature of British Romanticism and of the scope of his achievement within it.Less
This lecture discusses Robert Burns, a poet who dwelt on the early phase of the poem ‘Resolution and Independence’. It examines the critical introspection that has tended to exclude Burns from an increasingly narrow definition of Romanticism since 1945. The lecture presents an argument that Burns' concerns are in many respects not those of the ‘peasant poet’ or a particularist Scottish writer, but in dialogue with the other major British Romantic poets. Finally, it demonstrates that Burns' self-consciousness, poetic flexibility, and playful use of category and genre demand a deeper understanding of the nature of British Romanticism and of the scope of his achievement within it.
Julian North
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199571987
- eISBN:
- 9780191722363
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571987.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
This is a book about the biographical afterlives of the Romantic poets and the creation of literary biography as a popular form. It focuses on the first Lives of Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, ...
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This is a book about the biographical afterlives of the Romantic poets and the creation of literary biography as a popular form. It focuses on the first Lives of Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Felicia Hemans and Letitia Landon, published from the 1820s, by Thomas Moore, Mary Shelley, Thomas De Quincey and others, in the context of the development of biography as a genre from the 1780s to the 1840s. It argues that, from Johnson and Boswell onwards, the market success of biography was built on its representation and publication of domestic life. In the 1820s and 30s biographers ‘domesticated’ Byron, Shelley and other poets by situating them at home, opening up their private lives to view, and bringing readers into intimate contact with greatness. Biography was an influential transmitter of a myth of ‘the Romantic poet’, as the self-creating, masculine genius, but it also posed one of the first important challenges to that myth, by revealing failures in domestic responsibility that were often seen as indicative of these writers' inattention to the needs of the reader. Victorian biographers of the Romantic poets have been criticized for taming their subjects – making them respectable ‐ and biography was regarded with suspicion by the Romantic poets themselves. Yet Lives of the poets were also celebrated by critics, publishers and readers at the period, for their capacity to bring these poets home to the reader, in a sense that the poetry itself could not.Less
This is a book about the biographical afterlives of the Romantic poets and the creation of literary biography as a popular form. It focuses on the first Lives of Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Felicia Hemans and Letitia Landon, published from the 1820s, by Thomas Moore, Mary Shelley, Thomas De Quincey and others, in the context of the development of biography as a genre from the 1780s to the 1840s. It argues that, from Johnson and Boswell onwards, the market success of biography was built on its representation and publication of domestic life. In the 1820s and 30s biographers ‘domesticated’ Byron, Shelley and other poets by situating them at home, opening up their private lives to view, and bringing readers into intimate contact with greatness. Biography was an influential transmitter of a myth of ‘the Romantic poet’, as the self-creating, masculine genius, but it also posed one of the first important challenges to that myth, by revealing failures in domestic responsibility that were often seen as indicative of these writers' inattention to the needs of the reader. Victorian biographers of the Romantic poets have been criticized for taming their subjects – making them respectable ‐ and biography was regarded with suspicion by the Romantic poets themselves. Yet Lives of the poets were also celebrated by critics, publishers and readers at the period, for their capacity to bring these poets home to the reader, in a sense that the poetry itself could not.
Michael O'Neill
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122852
- eISBN:
- 9780191671579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122852.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
This chapter focuses on questions about the validity of certain historicist readings of Keats that depend on notions of art as displacement, but argues that the Hyperion project does register and ...
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This chapter focuses on questions about the validity of certain historicist readings of Keats that depend on notions of art as displacement, but argues that the Hyperion project does register and give shape to historical pressures, and that a principal means of such registering is the poetry's preoccupation with writing and the status of poetry. It suggests, in relation to the Induction to The Fall of Hyperion, that post-Romantic reflexiveness is ushered in by these lines, even as they can be viewed as speaking out of that ‘felt helplessness’ which Raymond Williams sees as afflicting Romantic poets.Less
This chapter focuses on questions about the validity of certain historicist readings of Keats that depend on notions of art as displacement, but argues that the Hyperion project does register and give shape to historical pressures, and that a principal means of such registering is the poetry's preoccupation with writing and the status of poetry. It suggests, in relation to the Induction to The Fall of Hyperion, that post-Romantic reflexiveness is ushered in by these lines, even as they can be viewed as speaking out of that ‘felt helplessness’ which Raymond Williams sees as afflicting Romantic poets.
Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160658
- eISBN:
- 9781400852598
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160658.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as ...
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This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, the book examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. The book traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others. The book considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. It then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. The book shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept. The book brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.Less
This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, the book examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. The book traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others. The book considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. It then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. The book shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept. The book brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.
Caroline Franklin
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112303
- eISBN:
- 9780191670763
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112303.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Male-authored Regency verse romances, published in the first fifteen years of the century, are examined initially as a group with regard to their ideology of gender. Irene Tayler and Gina Luria have ...
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Male-authored Regency verse romances, published in the first fifteen years of the century, are examined initially as a group with regard to their ideology of gender. Irene Tayler and Gina Luria have suggested that genre itself may be a function of gender in this period, because the novel was dominated by female authors, readers, and protagonists, while the canon of Romantic poets is entirely male. It was self-consciously feminine both in its polished crafsmanship and in its sentimental celebration of domesticity. The relationship between female-authored poetry and male Romanticism is therefore problematic for literary historians. This chapter suggests that male Regency poets therefore compensated by emphasising historical or mythic active adventure, minimising the theme of romantic love, and suffusing the issue of female chastity with the ideology of patriotism.Less
Male-authored Regency verse romances, published in the first fifteen years of the century, are examined initially as a group with regard to their ideology of gender. Irene Tayler and Gina Luria have suggested that genre itself may be a function of gender in this period, because the novel was dominated by female authors, readers, and protagonists, while the canon of Romantic poets is entirely male. It was self-consciously feminine both in its polished crafsmanship and in its sentimental celebration of domesticity. The relationship between female-authored poetry and male Romanticism is therefore problematic for literary historians. This chapter suggests that male Regency poets therefore compensated by emphasising historical or mythic active adventure, minimising the theme of romantic love, and suffusing the issue of female chastity with the ideology of patriotism.
Ralph Pite
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112945
- eISBN:
- 9780191670886
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112945.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
The sudden and spectacular growth in Dante's popularity in England at the end of the 18th century was immensely influential for English writers of the period. But the impact of Dante on English ...
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The sudden and spectacular growth in Dante's popularity in England at the end of the 18th century was immensely influential for English writers of the period. But the impact of Dante on English writers has rarely been analysed and its history has been little understood. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Blake, and Wordsworth all wrote and painted while Dante's work — its style, project, and achievement — commanded their attention and provoked their disagreement. This book discusses each of these writers in detail, assessing the nature of their engagement with the Divine Comedy and the consequences for their own writing. It explores how these Romantic poets understood Dante, what they valued in his poetry and why, setting them in the context of contemporary commentators, translators, and illustrators, (including Fuseli, Flaxman, and Reynolds) both in England and Europe. Romantic readings of the Divine Comedy are shown to disturb our own ideas about Dante, which are based on Victorian and Modernist assumptions. The book also presents a reconsideration of the concept of ‘influence’ in general, using the example of Dante's presence in Romantic poetry to challenge Harold Bloom's belief that the relations between poets are invariably a fight to the death.Less
The sudden and spectacular growth in Dante's popularity in England at the end of the 18th century was immensely influential for English writers of the period. But the impact of Dante on English writers has rarely been analysed and its history has been little understood. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Blake, and Wordsworth all wrote and painted while Dante's work — its style, project, and achievement — commanded their attention and provoked their disagreement. This book discusses each of these writers in detail, assessing the nature of their engagement with the Divine Comedy and the consequences for their own writing. It explores how these Romantic poets understood Dante, what they valued in his poetry and why, setting them in the context of contemporary commentators, translators, and illustrators, (including Fuseli, Flaxman, and Reynolds) both in England and Europe. Romantic readings of the Divine Comedy are shown to disturb our own ideas about Dante, which are based on Victorian and Modernist assumptions. The book also presents a reconsideration of the concept of ‘influence’ in general, using the example of Dante's presence in Romantic poetry to challenge Harold Bloom's belief that the relations between poets are invariably a fight to the death.
Abigail Williams
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199255207
- eISBN:
- 9780191719837
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199255207.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter concludes the book by asking what happened to the Whig poetic tradition in the later 18th century. It offers some preliminary suggestions of some of the aspects of later literary and ...
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This chapter concludes the book by asking what happened to the Whig poetic tradition in the later 18th century. It offers some preliminary suggestions of some of the aspects of later literary and political culture that contributed to its decline in popularity. But it also draws attention to the ways in which its influence can be seen in later verse, and in particular, in the poetic celebration of the Hanoverian monarchs, and in the developing tradition of sublime religious verse, exemplified by the works of Aaron Hill and James Thomson. It draws attention to the legacy of the Whig sublime for later Romantic poets, and the way in which this link troubles accepted notions of a shift from neoclassical to Romantic poetics in the 18th century.Less
This chapter concludes the book by asking what happened to the Whig poetic tradition in the later 18th century. It offers some preliminary suggestions of some of the aspects of later literary and political culture that contributed to its decline in popularity. But it also draws attention to the ways in which its influence can be seen in later verse, and in particular, in the poetic celebration of the Hanoverian monarchs, and in the developing tradition of sublime religious verse, exemplified by the works of Aaron Hill and James Thomson. It draws attention to the legacy of the Whig sublime for later Romantic poets, and the way in which this link troubles accepted notions of a shift from neoclassical to Romantic poetics in the 18th century.
Morton D. Paley
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199262175
- eISBN:
- 9780191698828
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262175.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter examines the interpretation and explanation of the topics of apocalypse and millennium in the works of English Romantic poet William Blake. In his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake ...
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This chapter examines the interpretation and explanation of the topics of apocalypse and millennium in the works of English Romantic poet William Blake. In his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake has introduced millennium that is coeval with apocalypse. He has shown in this work his knowledge of millenarian tradition and the apocalyptic destruction of the world. These topics have been a central concern in Blake's prophetic poems written in the 1790s and can also be observed in his other poems including Songs of Innocence and The French Revolution.Less
This chapter examines the interpretation and explanation of the topics of apocalypse and millennium in the works of English Romantic poet William Blake. In his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake has introduced millennium that is coeval with apocalypse. He has shown in this work his knowledge of millenarian tradition and the apocalyptic destruction of the world. These topics have been a central concern in Blake's prophetic poems written in the 1790s and can also be observed in his other poems including Songs of Innocence and The French Revolution.
Kristina Muxfeldt
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199782420
- eISBN:
- 9780199919154
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199782420.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Opera
This companion to chapter three looks at passages in Beethoven’s music that have been understood to be representations of memory, mainly by twentieth-century critics, although the topic equally ...
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This companion to chapter three looks at passages in Beethoven’s music that have been understood to be representations of memory, mainly by twentieth-century critics, although the topic equally occupied Romantic poets. In recent years subjective experiences of memory have become an object of intense scrutiny in the sciences and in literary studies, and scientists have been turning to representations by artists to guide research in cognition: poets and composers often have foreshadowed conclusions emerging from scientific investigation. The chapter takes up a number of striking instances in Beethoven’s music (contrasted with others in Schubert and Schumann), which are also the most immediate musical precedents for Schumann’s remarkable portrayal of memory in the song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben.Less
This companion to chapter three looks at passages in Beethoven’s music that have been understood to be representations of memory, mainly by twentieth-century critics, although the topic equally occupied Romantic poets. In recent years subjective experiences of memory have become an object of intense scrutiny in the sciences and in literary studies, and scientists have been turning to representations by artists to guide research in cognition: poets and composers often have foreshadowed conclusions emerging from scientific investigation. The chapter takes up a number of striking instances in Beethoven’s music (contrasted with others in Schubert and Schumann), which are also the most immediate musical precedents for Schumann’s remarkable portrayal of memory in the song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben.
Jerome J. McGann
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198117506
- eISBN:
- 9780191670961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117506.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
All of Lord Byron's works, and especially his published books, exhibit intersections of different kinds. His bibliography is more than a scholar's guide and resource, it is also a graphic display of ...
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All of Lord Byron's works, and especially his published books, exhibit intersections of different kinds. His bibliography is more than a scholar's guide and resource, it is also a graphic display of his life in books, and of the extension of his life through books. The piracies, the huge number of translations, and the numerous printings all attest and perpetuate the poetic explorations of reality which he initially set in motion. In 1822, Byron transforms Don Juan into a book of the European world, a comprehensive survey and explanation of the principal phases of the epoch 1789–1824. Don Juan is also the Book of Byron because he is its hero, because the poem gives the reader a history of 1789–1824 which is set and framed, at all points, in terms of Byron's history.Less
All of Lord Byron's works, and especially his published books, exhibit intersections of different kinds. His bibliography is more than a scholar's guide and resource, it is also a graphic display of his life in books, and of the extension of his life through books. The piracies, the huge number of translations, and the numerous printings all attest and perpetuate the poetic explorations of reality which he initially set in motion. In 1822, Byron transforms Don Juan into a book of the European world, a comprehensive survey and explanation of the principal phases of the epoch 1789–1824. Don Juan is also the Book of Byron because he is its hero, because the poem gives the reader a history of 1789–1824 which is set and framed, at all points, in terms of Byron's history.
Porscha Fermanis
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637805
- eISBN:
- 9780748652181
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637805.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
John Keats is generally considered to be the least intellectually sophisticated of all the major Romantic poets, but he was a more serious thinker than either his contemporaries or later scholars ...
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John Keats is generally considered to be the least intellectually sophisticated of all the major Romantic poets, but he was a more serious thinker than either his contemporaries or later scholars have acknowledged. This book provides a major reassessment of Keats' intellectual life by considering his engagement with a formidable body of eighteenth-century thought from the work of Voltaire, Robertson, and Gibbon to Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith. The book re-examines some of Keats' most important poems, including The Eve of St Agnes, Hyperion, Lamia, and Ode to Psyche, in the light of a range of Enlightenment ideas and contexts from literary history and cultural progress to anthropology, political economy, and moral philosophy. By demonstrating that the language and ideas of the Enlightenment played a key role in establishing his poetic agenda, Keats' poetry is shown to be less the expression of an intuitive young genius than the product of the cultural and intellectual contexts of his time. The book contributes to one of the most important current debates in literary scholarship — the understanding of the relationship between the Romantic period and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.Less
John Keats is generally considered to be the least intellectually sophisticated of all the major Romantic poets, but he was a more serious thinker than either his contemporaries or later scholars have acknowledged. This book provides a major reassessment of Keats' intellectual life by considering his engagement with a formidable body of eighteenth-century thought from the work of Voltaire, Robertson, and Gibbon to Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith. The book re-examines some of Keats' most important poems, including The Eve of St Agnes, Hyperion, Lamia, and Ode to Psyche, in the light of a range of Enlightenment ideas and contexts from literary history and cultural progress to anthropology, political economy, and moral philosophy. By demonstrating that the language and ideas of the Enlightenment played a key role in establishing his poetic agenda, Keats' poetry is shown to be less the expression of an intuitive young genius than the product of the cultural and intellectual contexts of his time. The book contributes to one of the most important current debates in literary scholarship — the understanding of the relationship between the Romantic period and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.
Ronald Hutton
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198207443
- eISBN:
- 9780191677670
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207443.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This book studies the only religion England has ever given the world, that of modern pagan witchcraft, which has now spread from English shores across four continents. The book examines the nature of ...
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This book studies the only religion England has ever given the world, that of modern pagan witchcraft, which has now spread from English shores across four continents. The book examines the nature of that religion and its development, and offers a microhistory of attitudes to paganism, witchcraft, and magic in British society since 1800. Village cunning folk and Victorian ritual magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and scouting movements, Freemasons and members of rural secret societies, all appear in the pages of this book. Also included are some of the leading figures of English literature, from the Romantic poets to W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have represented pagan witchcraft to the world since 1950.Less
This book studies the only religion England has ever given the world, that of modern pagan witchcraft, which has now spread from English shores across four continents. The book examines the nature of that religion and its development, and offers a microhistory of attitudes to paganism, witchcraft, and magic in British society since 1800. Village cunning folk and Victorian ritual magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and scouting movements, Freemasons and members of rural secret societies, all appear in the pages of this book. Also included are some of the leading figures of English literature, from the Romantic poets to W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have represented pagan witchcraft to the world since 1950.
Kenneth R. Johnston
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199657803
- eISBN:
- 9780191771576
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199657803.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
The French Revolution was greeted with enthusiasm by young British writers and intellectuals like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, following the lead of slightly older ‘public ...
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The French Revolution was greeted with enthusiasm by young British writers and intellectuals like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, following the lead of slightly older ‘public intellectuals’ like Thomas Paine, Joseph Priestley, William Godwin, and John Thelwall. But as the revolution turned violent, British enthusiasm for it waned. Activists for the cause of British parliamentary reform, who had embraced the revolution’s symbolic potential, were badly caught out by the turn of events. The Reign of Terror (1793–4) sealed the revolution’s fate in British cultural memory, but it was anticipated by a ‘reign of Alarm’ in England, announced by King George III’s proclamation against seditious writings in May, 1792. Originally aimed at Paine, this official encouragement of spying and informing spread rapidly, resulting in the largest number of trials for sedition and treason in British history. Paralleling official legal actions against accused traitors were unofficial vigilante acts by private citizens and institutions against persons whose liberal expressions alarmed others. These are the ‘unusual suspects’ of this book. As in the McCarthyite witch-hunts in 1950s America, the victims of this unregulated ‘hegemonic’ blacklisting are found disproportionately in academic and cultural arenas. National religious and educational bodies purged liberals, and promising literary careers were nipped in the bud. The loss to British culture is immense, if inestimable. Traces of this Alarmist trauma can be found in the works of six Romantic writers who did not find it ‘bliss to be alive [and] heaven to be young’ then: Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, Burns, and Blake.Less
The French Revolution was greeted with enthusiasm by young British writers and intellectuals like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, following the lead of slightly older ‘public intellectuals’ like Thomas Paine, Joseph Priestley, William Godwin, and John Thelwall. But as the revolution turned violent, British enthusiasm for it waned. Activists for the cause of British parliamentary reform, who had embraced the revolution’s symbolic potential, were badly caught out by the turn of events. The Reign of Terror (1793–4) sealed the revolution’s fate in British cultural memory, but it was anticipated by a ‘reign of Alarm’ in England, announced by King George III’s proclamation against seditious writings in May, 1792. Originally aimed at Paine, this official encouragement of spying and informing spread rapidly, resulting in the largest number of trials for sedition and treason in British history. Paralleling official legal actions against accused traitors were unofficial vigilante acts by private citizens and institutions against persons whose liberal expressions alarmed others. These are the ‘unusual suspects’ of this book. As in the McCarthyite witch-hunts in 1950s America, the victims of this unregulated ‘hegemonic’ blacklisting are found disproportionately in academic and cultural arenas. National religious and educational bodies purged liberals, and promising literary careers were nipped in the bud. The loss to British culture is immense, if inestimable. Traces of this Alarmist trauma can be found in the works of six Romantic writers who did not find it ‘bliss to be alive [and] heaven to be young’ then: Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, Burns, and Blake.
