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This chapter explores a related economy to that discussed in the previous chapter. In this case, not that of the relationships between bullion and paper money, but between the discourses of praise and dispraise, the great subjects of Jonson's Epigrams and other writings. This discourse is brought to bear for Coleridge by the figure of Robert Southey, his brother-in-law, and also the Poet Laureate. By arguing that Southey in his laureate writings was more influenced by Jonson's personal and poetic example than has been previously realised (and was, in turn, measured against them by those who thought him a marked falling off from such standards), the chapter argues that Southey forced Coleridge to think, again through the example of Jonson's writing, about the relationships of praise and dispraise, patronage and independence in his own writing life and in Southey's. Central to this debate for Coleridge is Jonson's play, Catiline. The chapter then returns to take up again the model of the poet as heir in its discussion of Hartley Coleridge, Coleridge's eldest child, who, the chapter suggests, came keenly to understand his own relationship with his father through Jonson's poems of paternity. This chapter tries to suggest that contrary to T. S. Eliot's claim — that for too long Jonson had failed to provide a ‘creative stimulus’ to later writers, none of whom since Dryden had offered a ‘living criticism of Jonson's works’ — we can see here writers whose work has been given life by, and has returned it to, Jonson's.

Skelton is strongly drawn to define his role in relation to the state. He is equally attracted by alternative formulations of poetic identity: those that locate the poet's authority in his learning, his place in a literary tradition, or his claim to divine inspiration. This chapter traces a number of these ideas through analysis of his poetic titles. It will thus identify the two contrasting views that recur throughout Skelton's writing. While the title orator regius locates the poet's authority in his position as the king's spokesman, the titles poet laureate and vates pave the way for viewing the poet's authority as innate.

This chapter focuses on the role of the artist in the creation of myths of and for the nation in post-unification Italy. In this process, the artist is both legislator and product of his age: the celebration of the new common history creates at once the myth of the nation and that of the poeta vate — as the ‘poet laureate’ was called in Italy. In nineteenth-century Italy political unification was accompanied by the consequent task of nation-building; this process turned out to be far more complex than anticipated and involved politicians and intellectuals alike in the common task of producing myths, symbols, and historical narratives for the newborn nation. Italian historians have investigated the strategies used in nineteenth-century Italy to create a sense of belonging to the newborn Italian kingdom. While analysing the new approaches to Dante that emerged from the process of nation-building, the chapter challenges teleological interpretations of ‘ideological’ uses of Dante and leaves space for Italian intellectuals' more complex and individual approaches to his work.

This chapter investigates Edward Rushton’s responsiveness to the tumultuous global dynamics underlying the ongoing alterations of assumed world order, which emerge in his writing with multifaceted prominence. Central to the analysis is Rushton’s consistent rejection of war, which finds a most radical expression in ‘Lines Addressed to Robert Southey’, one of his latest poems and a fierce critique of the newly appointed Poet Laureate’s first piece. The chapter investigates in detail the connection between Rushton and Southey, who met in 1808 and shared a passing connection and affinity; this would not prevent the former from shaping his unbending abhorrence of conflict into a powerful metapoetic verse response to the expansive rhetoric of Southey’s Carmen Triumphale for the Commencement of the Year 1814. Rushton’s poem is discussed against the background of the controversial reception of Southey’s piece. In a sort of implicit symmetry with the desolate picture of the European theatre of war, the poem ‘The Coromantees’ is examined as evidence of Rushton’s acute sensitivity to lacerating global issues, where the Caribbean seascape offers, this time, the Atlantic theatre for a new exercise in violence, brutal power and deceit, thus entering the meticulous construction of his global critique of imperialism.

This chapter discusses the last decade of Still’s life during which he published five books, including The Wolfpen Notebooks; River of Earth celebrated its 50^th anniversary; and Still was named Poet Laureate of Kentucky. He made an important new connection in Ted Olson who later would collect and edit his poems and stories. He strengthened friendships with writers Wendell Berry and Lee Smith, and influenced a range of younger writers including among others: George Ella Lyon, Chris Offutt, Maurice Manning, Crystal Wilkinson, and Silas House.