Simon Bainbridge
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198187585
- eISBN:
- 9780191718922
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187585.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses Walter Scott's picturesque romance of war. Scott was the bestselling and most popular poet of the Napoleonic wars and his metrical romances played a crucial role in mediating ...
More
This chapter discusses Walter Scott's picturesque romance of war. Scott was the bestselling and most popular poet of the Napoleonic wars and his metrical romances played a crucial role in mediating conflict to a nation at war. His phenomenally successful tales of ‘Border chivalry’ transformed the imagining of war, presenting it as heroic, shaped by the codes of romance, and framed by the conventions of the picturesque. Scott's poetry were about 16th-century wars but became popular during the Napoleonic wars. With his verse, the 18th-century emphasis on war's horrors gives way to the 19th-century stress on its glory. In addressing his readers as ‘Warriors’ in his last extended verse romance in 1814, Scott completed his remasculinisation of the reader and of poetry more generally contributing to the wartime revalidation of poetry as a manly pursuit for both writer and reader.Less
This chapter discusses Walter Scott's picturesque romance of war. Scott was the bestselling and most popular poet of the Napoleonic wars and his metrical romances played a crucial role in mediating conflict to a nation at war. His phenomenally successful tales of ‘Border chivalry’ transformed the imagining of war, presenting it as heroic, shaped by the codes of romance, and framed by the conventions of the picturesque. Scott's poetry were about 16th-century wars but became popular during the Napoleonic wars. With his verse, the 18th-century emphasis on war's horrors gives way to the 19th-century stress on its glory. In addressing his readers as ‘Warriors’ in his last extended verse romance in 1814, Scott completed his remasculinisation of the reader and of poetry more generally contributing to the wartime revalidation of poetry as a manly pursuit for both writer and reader.
Simon Bainbridge
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198187585
- eISBN:
- 9780191718922
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187585.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book argues that poetry played a major role in the mediation of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars to the British public, and that the wars had a significant impact on poetic practices and ...
More
This book argues that poetry played a major role in the mediation of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars to the British public, and that the wars had a significant impact on poetic practices and theories in the Romantic period. It examines a wide range of writers, both canonical (Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron) and non-canonical (Smith, Southey, Scott, and Hemans), and locates their work within the huge amount of war poetry published in newspapers and magazines. It shows that poetry was a crucial form through which what were seen as the first modern or ‘total’ wars were imagined in Britain and that it was central to the cultural and political debates over the conflict with France. While the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars compelled poets to re-examine their roles, it was poetry itself which produced a major transformation of the imagining of war that would be influential throughout the 19th century.Less
This book argues that poetry played a major role in the mediation of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars to the British public, and that the wars had a significant impact on poetic practices and theories in the Romantic period. It examines a wide range of writers, both canonical (Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron) and non-canonical (Smith, Southey, Scott, and Hemans), and locates their work within the huge amount of war poetry published in newspapers and magazines. It shows that poetry was a crucial form through which what were seen as the first modern or ‘total’ wars were imagined in Britain and that it was central to the cultural and political debates over the conflict with France. While the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars compelled poets to re-examine their roles, it was poetry itself which produced a major transformation of the imagining of war that would be influential throughout the 19th century.
