Ron Johnston (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264584
- eISBN:
- 9780191734069
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264584.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This volume contains ten lectures in the humanities and social sciences delivered at the British Academy in 2008. The lectures cover topics ranging from an exploration of the relationship between ...
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This volume contains ten lectures in the humanities and social sciences delivered at the British Academy in 2008. The lectures cover topics ranging from an exploration of the relationship between reason and identity, to an examination of social integration as the world becomes a more diverse place, to a consideration of the works of four great literary figures: King Alfred, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and W. H. Auden.Less
This volume contains ten lectures in the humanities and social sciences delivered at the British Academy in 2008. The lectures cover topics ranging from an exploration of the relationship between reason and identity, to an examination of social integration as the world becomes a more diverse place, to a consideration of the works of four great literary figures: King Alfred, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and W. H. Auden.
Anne D. Wallace
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183280
- eISBN:
- 9780191674006
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183280.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book is a cultural history of walking in 19th-century England, assessing its importance in literature and in culture at large. Engaging with current debates about the relationship between ...
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This book is a cultural history of walking in 19th-century England, assessing its importance in literature and in culture at large. Engaging with current debates about the relationship between industrialization and cultural production, and between technology and the picturesque, the book examines the forces that transformed walking from an unwelcomed fact of life to a celebrated activity for mind and body. Rereading Wordsworth in the context of contemporary changes in transport, agriculture, and aesthetics, it articulates a previously unacknowledged literary mode — peripatetic. Walking and its representation is set in terms of specific historical circumstances, for example the rise of enclosure, which the book shows is partially undermined by the assertion of footpath rights. The discussions move from 18th-century approaches to peripatetic through its varied uses in Victorian literature, notably in the work of Barrett Browning, Dickens, and Hardy. The book demonstrates how a proper understanding of peripatetic significantly enriches our assessment of a text's relation to its culture.Less
This book is a cultural history of walking in 19th-century England, assessing its importance in literature and in culture at large. Engaging with current debates about the relationship between industrialization and cultural production, and between technology and the picturesque, the book examines the forces that transformed walking from an unwelcomed fact of life to a celebrated activity for mind and body. Rereading Wordsworth in the context of contemporary changes in transport, agriculture, and aesthetics, it articulates a previously unacknowledged literary mode — peripatetic. Walking and its representation is set in terms of specific historical circumstances, for example the rise of enclosure, which the book shows is partially undermined by the assertion of footpath rights. The discussions move from 18th-century approaches to peripatetic through its varied uses in Victorian literature, notably in the work of Barrett Browning, Dickens, and Hardy. The book demonstrates how a proper understanding of peripatetic significantly enriches our assessment of a text's relation to its culture.
Morton D. Paley
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186854
- eISBN:
- 9780191674570
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186854.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
The poems that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote after his golden period are seldom studied or anthologised. Yet among the poems written after his most famous works are of quality and interest, ...
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The poems that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote after his golden period are seldom studied or anthologised. Yet among the poems written after his most famous works are of quality and interest, addressing such universal themes as the nature of the self and the experience of unfulfilled love. This book examines the later verse in the context of Coleridge's oeuvre, discusses what characterises it, and looks at why the poet felt he had to develop distinctively different modes of writing for these works. ‘To William Wordsworth’ is presented as a transitional poem, exhibiting the vatic quality of earlier poems even while declaring that this quality must be abandoned. The book then explores the poetry of the abyss (which the book terms The Limbo Constellation), and this is followed by poems on the theme of the self and of love. The last chapter examines the role of epitaphs in the later works, culminating in a study of the epitaph Coleridge wrote for himself.Less
The poems that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote after his golden period are seldom studied or anthologised. Yet among the poems written after his most famous works are of quality and interest, addressing such universal themes as the nature of the self and the experience of unfulfilled love. This book examines the later verse in the context of Coleridge's oeuvre, discusses what characterises it, and looks at why the poet felt he had to develop distinctively different modes of writing for these works. ‘To William Wordsworth’ is presented as a transitional poem, exhibiting the vatic quality of earlier poems even while declaring that this quality must be abandoned. The book then explores the poetry of the abyss (which the book terms The Limbo Constellation), and this is followed by poems on the theme of the self and of love. The last chapter examines the role of epitaphs in the later works, culminating in a study of the epitaph Coleridge wrote for himself.
Stephen Gill
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119654
- eISBN:
- 9780191671180
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119654.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The Victorian understanding of William Wordsworth was different from that of the modern era. This chapter looks at his career as a poet and his oeuvre. The representative selection issued under the ...
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The Victorian understanding of William Wordsworth was different from that of the modern era. This chapter looks at his career as a poet and his oeuvre. The representative selection issued under the auspices of the Wordsworth Society in 1888 exemplifies Wordsworth’s poetry to 1846. A selection entitled Early Poems of William Wordsworth signals work up to 1798, Lyrical Ballads being recognized as the beginning of his great decade of maturity. This chapter also explores the motive behind the research for this book. The main interest for this book was Wordsworth’s cultural significance during his last twenty-five years. At a time when his creative powers were waning, his cultural significance grew.Less
The Victorian understanding of William Wordsworth was different from that of the modern era. This chapter looks at his career as a poet and his oeuvre. The representative selection issued under the auspices of the Wordsworth Society in 1888 exemplifies Wordsworth’s poetry to 1846. A selection entitled Early Poems of William Wordsworth signals work up to 1798, Lyrical Ballads being recognized as the beginning of his great decade of maturity. This chapter also explores the motive behind the research for this book. The main interest for this book was Wordsworth’s cultural significance during his last twenty-five years. At a time when his creative powers were waning, his cultural significance grew.
Stephen Gill
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119654
- eISBN:
- 9780191671180
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119654.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
In Grasmere in 1880 the Wordsworth Society was established, at a meeting which elected Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of St Andrews, as President, George Wilson as Treasure, and William Knight as ...
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In Grasmere in 1880 the Wordsworth Society was established, at a meeting which elected Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of St Andrews, as President, George Wilson as Treasure, and William Knight as Secretary. The Constitution adopted declared that the organization was to act primarily as ‘a bond of union amongst those who are in sympathy with the general teaching and spirit of Wordsworth’. The stated objectives also included: to carry on the literary work which remains to be done in connection with the text and chronology of the poems; to collect for preservation and publication of original letters and unpublished reminiscences of the poet.Less
In Grasmere in 1880 the Wordsworth Society was established, at a meeting which elected Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of St Andrews, as President, George Wilson as Treasure, and William Knight as Secretary. The Constitution adopted declared that the organization was to act primarily as ‘a bond of union amongst those who are in sympathy with the general teaching and spirit of Wordsworth’. The stated objectives also included: to carry on the literary work which remains to be done in connection with the text and chronology of the poems; to collect for preservation and publication of original letters and unpublished reminiscences of the poet.
Stephen Gill
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119654
- eISBN:
- 9780191671180
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119654.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter deals with issues related to the popularity of William Wordsworth. After the publican of Tess of the D'Urbervilles in 1891, for two decades, articles and books had been honouring either ...
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This chapter deals with issues related to the popularity of William Wordsworth. After the publican of Tess of the D'Urbervilles in 1891, for two decades, articles and books had been honouring either Wordsworth’s poetry or his philosophy and often both. A society of notable people had been formed to promote the Wordsworthian message. In 1891 itself The Wordsworth Dictionary also appeared and the poet's home in Grasmere was bought by a group of devotees as a shrine for posterity. Wordsworth was once more in various forms a living cultural force, after a long period during which, even though he was being energetically marked, his visibility as an intellectual presence had faded.Less
This chapter deals with issues related to the popularity of William Wordsworth. After the publican of Tess of the D'Urbervilles in 1891, for two decades, articles and books had been honouring either Wordsworth’s poetry or his philosophy and often both. A society of notable people had been formed to promote the Wordsworthian message. In 1891 itself The Wordsworth Dictionary also appeared and the poet's home in Grasmere was bought by a group of devotees as a shrine for posterity. Wordsworth was once more in various forms a living cultural force, after a long period during which, even though he was being energetically marked, his visibility as an intellectual presence had faded.
Morton D. Paley
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186854
- eISBN:
- 9780191674570
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186854.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ‘To William Wordsworth’ is a door that closes in one direction to open in another. As the poem exists in two basically different forms, this chapter begins with a brief ...
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ‘To William Wordsworth’ is a door that closes in one direction to open in another. As the poem exists in two basically different forms, this chapter begins with a brief account of its textual history. After writing his draft, Coleridge made a fair copy. This manuscript, now in the Dove Cottage Library, was presumably given by Coleridge to William Wordsworth. A copy of it, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, was made by Sara Hutchinson for Coleridge to keep. These two texts are very similar, with a few significant variants that merit discussion. When the poem appeared in print in Sibylline Leaves, however, it was in significantly different form. The three subsequent lifetime publications, in the Poetical Works of 1828, 1829, and 1834 vary little from the Sibylline Leaves version. This division of ‘To William Wordsworth’ into two basic versions was a result of Wordsworth's opposition to having it published at all.Less
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ‘To William Wordsworth’ is a door that closes in one direction to open in another. As the poem exists in two basically different forms, this chapter begins with a brief account of its textual history. After writing his draft, Coleridge made a fair copy. This manuscript, now in the Dove Cottage Library, was presumably given by Coleridge to William Wordsworth. A copy of it, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, was made by Sara Hutchinson for Coleridge to keep. These two texts are very similar, with a few significant variants that merit discussion. When the poem appeared in print in Sibylline Leaves, however, it was in significantly different form. The three subsequent lifetime publications, in the Poetical Works of 1828, 1829, and 1834 vary little from the Sibylline Leaves version. This division of ‘To William Wordsworth’ into two basic versions was a result of Wordsworth's opposition to having it published at all.
Julia Bush
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199248773
- eISBN:
- 9780191714689
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248773.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The maternal reformers were the most important leadership group among the women anti-suffragists. Their ideas underpinned what became known, after 1908, as the forward policy: a positive version of ...
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The maternal reformers were the most important leadership group among the women anti-suffragists. Their ideas underpinned what became known, after 1908, as the forward policy: a positive version of female anti-suffragism which aimed to enhance women's gendered participation in public life as social reformers and participants in local government, whilst sparing them from the polluting rigours of parliamentary politics. This chapter opens with a discussion of the growing importance of maternalism in Victorian Britain. A group of leading anti-suffragist maternal reformers is identified, including Mary Ward, Louise Creighton, Ethel Harrison, Elizabeth Wordsworth, and Lucy Soulsby. An outline is presented of their formative years and personal experiences of female education. This is followed by a discussion of their ideas and activities as maternalist educational reformers in late Victorian Oxford and elsewhere. Despite varied life experiences, these women shared important ideals which were relevant to wider female anti-suffragism.Less
The maternal reformers were the most important leadership group among the women anti-suffragists. Their ideas underpinned what became known, after 1908, as the forward policy: a positive version of female anti-suffragism which aimed to enhance women's gendered participation in public life as social reformers and participants in local government, whilst sparing them from the polluting rigours of parliamentary politics. This chapter opens with a discussion of the growing importance of maternalism in Victorian Britain. A group of leading anti-suffragist maternal reformers is identified, including Mary Ward, Louise Creighton, Ethel Harrison, Elizabeth Wordsworth, and Lucy Soulsby. An outline is presented of their formative years and personal experiences of female education. This is followed by a discussion of their ideas and activities as maternalist educational reformers in late Victorian Oxford and elsewhere. Despite varied life experiences, these women shared important ideals which were relevant to wider female anti-suffragism.
Emily Sun
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823232802
- eISBN:
- 9780823241163
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823232802.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book investigates Shakespeare's King Lear and its originative power in modern literature with specific attention to the early work of English Romantic poet William Wordsworth and to the American ...
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This book investigates Shakespeare's King Lear and its originative power in modern literature with specific attention to the early work of English Romantic poet William Wordsworth and to the American writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans. It examines how these later readers return to the play to interrogate emphatically the question of the relations between literature and politics in modernity and to initiate in this way their own creative trajectories. King Lear opens up a literary genealogy or history of successors, at the heart and origin of which, the author claims, is a crisis of sovereignty. The tragedy famously begins with the title character's decision to give up his throne and divide the kingdom prior to his demise. In bringing to light the assumptions behind this logic, and in dramatizing its disastrous consequences, the play performs an implicit analysis and critique of sovereignty as the guiding principle of political life and gestures, beyond sovereignty, towards the possibility of a new aesthetic and political future. The question of the relations between literature and politics does not only open up immanently or internally within King Lear, this book argues, but is also that which occasions a literary history of readers who return to the play as to an originary locus for dealing with a problem.Less
This book investigates Shakespeare's King Lear and its originative power in modern literature with specific attention to the early work of English Romantic poet William Wordsworth and to the American writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans. It examines how these later readers return to the play to interrogate emphatically the question of the relations between literature and politics in modernity and to initiate in this way their own creative trajectories. King Lear opens up a literary genealogy or history of successors, at the heart and origin of which, the author claims, is a crisis of sovereignty. The tragedy famously begins with the title character's decision to give up his throne and divide the kingdom prior to his demise. In bringing to light the assumptions behind this logic, and in dramatizing its disastrous consequences, the play performs an implicit analysis and critique of sovereignty as the guiding principle of political life and gestures, beyond sovereignty, towards the possibility of a new aesthetic and political future. The question of the relations between literature and politics does not only open up immanently or internally within King Lear, this book argues, but is also that which occasions a literary history of readers who return to the play as to an originary locus for dealing with a problem.
Terryl L. Givens
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195313901
- eISBN:
- 9780199871933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195313901.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Romanticism brings back the twinned concepts of preexistence and theosis. The revival of Plato (under Thomas Taylor's influence) sparks revival of interest in preexistence especially. William Blake, ...
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Romanticism brings back the twinned concepts of preexistence and theosis. The revival of Plato (under Thomas Taylor's influence) sparks revival of interest in preexistence especially. William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Coleridge are only the most prominent names among the Romantics, as is Alfred, Lord Tennyson among the Victorians, and Ralph Waldo Emerson among the Transcendentalists, to espouse preexistence.Less
Romanticism brings back the twinned concepts of preexistence and theosis. The revival of Plato (under Thomas Taylor's influence) sparks revival of interest in preexistence especially. William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Coleridge are only the most prominent names among the Romantics, as is Alfred, Lord Tennyson among the Victorians, and Ralph Waldo Emerson among the Transcendentalists, to espouse preexistence.
Yohei Igarashi
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781503610040
- eISBN:
- 9781503610736
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503610040.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
How can Romantic poetry, motivated by the poet’s intense yearning to impart his thoughts and feelings, be so often difficult and the cause of readerly misunderstanding? How did it come to be that a ...
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How can Romantic poetry, motivated by the poet’s intense yearning to impart his thoughts and feelings, be so often difficult and the cause of readerly misunderstanding? How did it come to be that a poet can compose a verbal artwork, carefully and lovingly put together, and send it out into the world at the same time that he is adopting a stance against communication? This book addresses these questions by showing that the period’s writers were responding to the beginnings of our networked world of rampant mediated communication. The Connected Condition reveals that major Romantic poets shared a great attraction and skepticism toward the dream of perfectible, efficient connectivity that has driven the modern culture of communication. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and John Keats all experimented with their artistic medium of poetry to pursue such ideals of speedy, transparent communication at the same time that they tried out contrarian literary strategies: writing excessively ornate verse, prolonging literary reading with tedious writing, being obscure, and questioning the allure of quickly delivered information. This book shows that the Romantic poets have much to teach us about living in—and living with—the connected condition, as well as the fortunes of literature in it.Less
How can Romantic poetry, motivated by the poet’s intense yearning to impart his thoughts and feelings, be so often difficult and the cause of readerly misunderstanding? How did it come to be that a poet can compose a verbal artwork, carefully and lovingly put together, and send it out into the world at the same time that he is adopting a stance against communication? This book addresses these questions by showing that the period’s writers were responding to the beginnings of our networked world of rampant mediated communication. The Connected Condition reveals that major Romantic poets shared a great attraction and skepticism toward the dream of perfectible, efficient connectivity that has driven the modern culture of communication. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and John Keats all experimented with their artistic medium of poetry to pursue such ideals of speedy, transparent communication at the same time that they tried out contrarian literary strategies: writing excessively ornate verse, prolonging literary reading with tedious writing, being obscure, and questioning the allure of quickly delivered information. This book shows that the Romantic poets have much to teach us about living in—and living with—the connected condition, as well as the fortunes of literature in it.
John Rogerson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195383355
- eISBN:
- 9780199870561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195383355.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies, History of Christianity
Darwin's On the Origin of Species made much less of an impact on the interpretation of Genesis than might have been expected. This was largely because geological discoveries and their implications ...
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Darwin's On the Origin of Species made much less of an impact on the interpretation of Genesis than might have been expected. This was largely because geological discoveries and their implications for the age of the world, the antiquity of the human race, and the biblical story of a universal flood preoccupied biblical scholars for much of the nineteenth century, from the 1820s to the end of the century. This chapter illustrates the diversity of the interpretations of Genesis during this period, one in which even the defenders of the accuracy of Genesis against science were by no means agreed on how to handle the biblical material.Less
Darwin's On the Origin of Species made much less of an impact on the interpretation of Genesis than might have been expected. This was largely because geological discoveries and their implications for the age of the world, the antiquity of the human race, and the biblical story of a universal flood preoccupied biblical scholars for much of the nineteenth century, from the 1820s to the end of the century. This chapter illustrates the diversity of the interpretations of Genesis during this period, one in which even the defenders of the accuracy of Genesis against science were by no means agreed on how to handle the biblical material.
Herbert F. Tucker
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232987
- eISBN:
- 9780191716447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232987.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter assesses the correction that was imposed around 1800 on the 1790s epic explosion by British national mobilization for war and suppression of dissent. A host of orthodox martial epics ...
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This chapter assesses the correction that was imposed around 1800 on the 1790s epic explosion by British national mobilization for war and suppression of dissent. A host of orthodox martial epics were mustered up by ambitious patriots to celebrate recent victories or nourish nationalism on, say, the royal careers of Saxon Alfred and Richard the crusader. More thoughtful poets employed the genre for complex accounts of chastened ambition valorizing the backward look and the second chance. Narrated in a reparative spirit that both sprang from the previous decade's revolutionary engineering and amended it, a striking constellation of major poetic ventures were completed around 1805 by Tighe, Southey, Blake, Wordsworth, and Scott, for which personal and political revisionism, and their mutual relation, form common themes.Less
This chapter assesses the correction that was imposed around 1800 on the 1790s epic explosion by British national mobilization for war and suppression of dissent. A host of orthodox martial epics were mustered up by ambitious patriots to celebrate recent victories or nourish nationalism on, say, the royal careers of Saxon Alfred and Richard the crusader. More thoughtful poets employed the genre for complex accounts of chastened ambition valorizing the backward look and the second chance. Narrated in a reparative spirit that both sprang from the previous decade's revolutionary engineering and amended it, a striking constellation of major poetic ventures were completed around 1805 by Tighe, Southey, Blake, Wordsworth, and Scott, for which personal and political revisionism, and their mutual relation, form common themes.
Herbert F. Tucker
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232987
- eISBN:
- 9780191716447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232987.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter takes its lead from Marmion. On one hand, Scott's extremely influential poem opened the epic genre to romance motifs more relaxed in their plotting and versification than had hitherto ...
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This chapter takes its lead from Marmion. On one hand, Scott's extremely influential poem opened the epic genre to romance motifs more relaxed in their plotting and versification than had hitherto appeared; on the other hand, it cross-hatched with new complexity both the figure of the hero and the compromised national identity for which the heroic ideal continued to stand. Epic themes broadened in geographic and ethnic range, glimpsing alternative subaltern histories and betraying, even in Bible epics, a tinge of moral complicity in wrongs whose unredressed balance forward gave a new kind of impetus to collective history. In signal poems clustering around 1815 by Southey, Blake, and Wordsworth, the earlier motif of error yields to guilt, correction, and repair to forgiveness and endurance.Less
This chapter takes its lead from Marmion. On one hand, Scott's extremely influential poem opened the epic genre to romance motifs more relaxed in their plotting and versification than had hitherto appeared; on the other hand, it cross-hatched with new complexity both the figure of the hero and the compromised national identity for which the heroic ideal continued to stand. Epic themes broadened in geographic and ethnic range, glimpsing alternative subaltern histories and betraying, even in Bible epics, a tinge of moral complicity in wrongs whose unredressed balance forward gave a new kind of impetus to collective history. In signal poems clustering around 1815 by Southey, Blake, and Wordsworth, the earlier motif of error yields to guilt, correction, and repair to forgiveness and endurance.
Murray Pittock
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232796
- eISBN:
- 9780191716409
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232796.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter provides a detailed discussion of Burns' key writings. It begins by contrasting his continuing sales and international impact with his virtual disappearance from British literary history ...
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This chapter provides a detailed discussion of Burns' key writings. It begins by contrasting his continuing sales and international impact with his virtual disappearance from British literary history after 1960, and argues that more recent assessments of him as a ‘peasant poet’ are fundamentally misleading because they seriously underestimate both his linguistic sophistication and its thematic effects in his poetry, which is read as having a great deal in common with Wordsworth, whose themes Burns anticipated in a number of respects. The bulk of the chapter offers close readings of several prominent Burns poems, laying stress on the sophistication of their effects. An in-depth reading of ‘Tam o'Shanter’ reveals it as a critique of the aesthetics of the Romantic collector. The chapter closes with a consideration of the influence of Currie's edition of Burns on subsequent readings. Tom Crawford and Nigel Leask are singled out as important critics.Less
This chapter provides a detailed discussion of Burns' key writings. It begins by contrasting his continuing sales and international impact with his virtual disappearance from British literary history after 1960, and argues that more recent assessments of him as a ‘peasant poet’ are fundamentally misleading because they seriously underestimate both his linguistic sophistication and its thematic effects in his poetry, which is read as having a great deal in common with Wordsworth, whose themes Burns anticipated in a number of respects. The bulk of the chapter offers close readings of several prominent Burns poems, laying stress on the sophistication of their effects. An in-depth reading of ‘Tam o'Shanter’ reveals it as a critique of the aesthetics of the Romantic collector. The chapter closes with a consideration of the influence of Currie's edition of Burns on subsequent readings. Tom Crawford and Nigel Leask are singled out as important critics.
Nicholas Halmi
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199212415
- eISBN:
- 9780191707223
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212415.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter begins with a discussion of the concept of the symbol as articulated by a number of German writers and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the period designated as the age of Goethe in German ...
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This chapter begins with a discussion of the concept of the symbol as articulated by a number of German writers and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the period designated as the age of Goethe in German literary history and the Romantic period in British literary history, in the years between 1770 and 1830. It argues that the theorization of the symbol in the Romantic period may be understood as an attempt to foster a sense of the harmony of the human mind with nature, of the unity of seemingly disparate intellectual disciplines, and of the compatibility of individual freedom with a cohesive social structure — all for the sake of reducing anxiety about the place of the individual in bourgeois society (especially in the aftermath of the French Revolution and ensuing European wars) and about the increasing dominance of mechanistic science. To the extent that it sought to effect a re-enchantment of the world by reforming perception, the symbolist theory of the philosophically minded Romantics, for the most part Germans, was closely related to the poetic project of English poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, who sought to reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary and thereby transform human understanding of the external world.Less
This chapter begins with a discussion of the concept of the symbol as articulated by a number of German writers and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the period designated as the age of Goethe in German literary history and the Romantic period in British literary history, in the years between 1770 and 1830. It argues that the theorization of the symbol in the Romantic period may be understood as an attempt to foster a sense of the harmony of the human mind with nature, of the unity of seemingly disparate intellectual disciplines, and of the compatibility of individual freedom with a cohesive social structure — all for the sake of reducing anxiety about the place of the individual in bourgeois society (especially in the aftermath of the French Revolution and ensuing European wars) and about the increasing dominance of mechanistic science. To the extent that it sought to effect a re-enchantment of the world by reforming perception, the symbolist theory of the philosophically minded Romantics, for the most part Germans, was closely related to the poetic project of English poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, who sought to reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary and thereby transform human understanding of the external world.
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/9780199234745.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
This chapter explores how invention and imagination marked Pushkin's lyric thinking about nature. It argues that it is not until the 1830s that Pushkin's lyric treatment of nature finally aligns him ...
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This chapter explores how invention and imagination marked Pushkin's lyric thinking about nature. It argues that it is not until the 1830s that Pushkin's lyric treatment of nature finally aligns him with Romantic subjectivity. The chapter begins with a discussion of the role of nature in his first collection of poems, a patently important moment when Pushkin, the famed author of narrative, achieved comparable status as a lyric poet. It considers two examples of the Pushkinian Greater Romantic Lyric, which are among his greatest poems, ‘Autumn’ and ‘I visit once again. . . ’, the latter a revision of Wordsworth's ‘Tintern Abbey’ (1798). It is because nature is more prominent for its absence than presence in Pushkin's lyric that these poems mark an exceptional trial of a Romantic mode for Pushkin.Less
This chapter explores how invention and imagination marked Pushkin's lyric thinking about nature. It argues that it is not until the 1830s that Pushkin's lyric treatment of nature finally aligns him with Romantic subjectivity. The chapter begins with a discussion of the role of nature in his first collection of poems, a patently important moment when Pushkin, the famed author of narrative, achieved comparable status as a lyric poet. It considers two examples of the Pushkinian Greater Romantic Lyric, which are among his greatest poems, ‘Autumn’ and ‘I visit once again. . . ’, the latter a revision of Wordsworth's ‘Tintern Abbey’ (1798). It is because nature is more prominent for its absence than presence in Pushkin's lyric that these poems mark an exceptional trial of a Romantic mode for Pushkin.
MATTHEW CAMPBELL
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264584
- eISBN:
- 9780191734069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264584.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This lecture presents the text of the speech about English poet William Wordsworth and the druids delivered by the author at the 2008 Warton Lecture on English Poetry held at the British Academy. It ...
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This lecture presents the text of the speech about English poet William Wordsworth and the druids delivered by the author at the 2008 Warton Lecture on English Poetry held at the British Academy. It provides an analysis of the beginning of Book III of The Excursion and explains the concepts of the Poet, the Wanderer, and the Solitary. The lecture suggests that Wordsworth's characters inhabit a common land until modernity takes it away from them, and that this dissolves the natural regenerative seasonal cycle in which humans now find it so difficult to live and work.Less
This lecture presents the text of the speech about English poet William Wordsworth and the druids delivered by the author at the 2008 Warton Lecture on English Poetry held at the British Academy. It provides an analysis of the beginning of Book III of The Excursion and explains the concepts of the Poet, the Wanderer, and the Solitary. The lecture suggests that Wordsworth's characters inhabit a common land until modernity takes it away from them, and that this dissolves the natural regenerative seasonal cycle in which humans now find it so difficult to live and work.
Matthew Bevis
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226652054
- eISBN:
- 9780226652221
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226652221.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
“The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge’s cottage.... He answered in some degree to his friend’s description of him, but was more quaint and Don Quixote-like.... There was a ...
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“The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge’s cottage.... He answered in some degree to his friend’s description of him, but was more quaint and Don Quixote-like.... There was a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his face.” William Hazlitt's words present a Wordsworth who differs from the one we know. This book argues that the poet's quixotic creativity owes much to this mixture of the solemn and the laughable, one that is vitally related to his hopes for his writing and to his sense of the risks and embarrassments that such hopes entail. Wordsworth’s Fun explores the poet’s debts to the ludic and the ludicrous in classical tradition; his reading and reworking of Ariosto, Erasmus, and Cervantes; his engagement with forms of English poetic humor; and his love of comic prose. The book travels many untrodden ways, examining the relationship between Wordsworth’s metrical practice and his interest in laughing gas, his fascination with pantomime, his investment in the figure of the fool, and his response to discussions about the value of play. The book sheds fresh light on debates about the causes, aims, and effects of humor, and also on the contribution of Wordsworth’s peculiar humor to the shaping of the modern poetic experiment.Less
“The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge’s cottage.... He answered in some degree to his friend’s description of him, but was more quaint and Don Quixote-like.... There was a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his face.” William Hazlitt's words present a Wordsworth who differs from the one we know. This book argues that the poet's quixotic creativity owes much to this mixture of the solemn and the laughable, one that is vitally related to his hopes for his writing and to his sense of the risks and embarrassments that such hopes entail. Wordsworth’s Fun explores the poet’s debts to the ludic and the ludicrous in classical tradition; his reading and reworking of Ariosto, Erasmus, and Cervantes; his engagement with forms of English poetic humor; and his love of comic prose. The book travels many untrodden ways, examining the relationship between Wordsworth’s metrical practice and his interest in laughing gas, his fascination with pantomime, his investment in the figure of the fool, and his response to discussions about the value of play. The book sheds fresh light on debates about the causes, aims, and effects of humor, and also on the contribution of Wordsworth’s peculiar humor to the shaping of the modern poetic experiment.
Paul Cheshire
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941206
- eISBN:
- 9781789629439
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941206.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
William Gilbert, poet, theosophist and astrologer, published The Hurricane: A Theosophical and Western Eclogue in Bristol in 1796, while he was on intimate terms with key members of Bristol literary ...
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William Gilbert, poet, theosophist and astrologer, published The Hurricane: A Theosophical and Western Eclogue in Bristol in 1796, while he was on intimate terms with key members of Bristol literary culture: Coleridge published an extract from The Hurricane in his radical periodical The Watchman; Robert Southey wrote of the poem’s ‘passages of exquisite Beauty’; and William Wordsworth praised and quoted a long passage from Gilbert’s poem in The Excursion. The Hurricane is a copiously annotated 450 line blank verse visionary poem set on the island of Antigua where, in 1763, Gilbert was born into a slave-owning Methodist family. The poem can be grouped with other apocalyptic poems of the 1790s—Blake’s 'Continental Prophecies', Coleridge's 'Religious Musings', Southey's Joan of Arc—all of which gave a spiritual interpretation to the dramatic political upheavals of their time. William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism presents the untold story of Gilbert’s progress from the radical occultist circles of 1790s London to his engagement with the first generation Romantics in Bristol. At the heart of the book is the first modern edition of The Hurricane, fully annotated to reveal the esoteric metaphysics at its core, followed by close interpretative analysis of this strange elusive poem.Less
William Gilbert, poet, theosophist and astrologer, published The Hurricane: A Theosophical and Western Eclogue in Bristol in 1796, while he was on intimate terms with key members of Bristol literary culture: Coleridge published an extract from The Hurricane in his radical periodical The Watchman; Robert Southey wrote of the poem’s ‘passages of exquisite Beauty’; and William Wordsworth praised and quoted a long passage from Gilbert’s poem in The Excursion. The Hurricane is a copiously annotated 450 line blank verse visionary poem set on the island of Antigua where, in 1763, Gilbert was born into a slave-owning Methodist family. The poem can be grouped with other apocalyptic poems of the 1790s—Blake’s 'Continental Prophecies', Coleridge's 'Religious Musings', Southey's Joan of Arc—all of which gave a spiritual interpretation to the dramatic political upheavals of their time. William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism presents the untold story of Gilbert’s progress from the radical occultist circles of 1790s London to his engagement with the first generation Romantics in Bristol. At the heart of the book is the first modern edition of The Hurricane, fully annotated to reveal the esoteric metaphysics at its core, followed by close interpretative analysis of this strange elusive poem.
