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'This timely gathering of excellent scholars refreshes and deepens our understanding of "Peterloo." Reading it as now providing an argument for non-violent popular action and now revealing dispersed state violence, the collection broadens our approach to Peterloo to responses in painting, poetry, and plays and to reactions from Ireland, Scotland, and America.'
Jeffrey N. Cox, University of Colorado Boulder
Reflections on the Bicentenary of the 1819 Massacre of Reformers in Manchester
Two hundred years after the massacre of protestors in Manchester, known as Peterloo, distinguished scholars of Romantic-era literature join together in this commemorative volume to assess the implications of the violence. Contributors explore how attitudes towards violence and the claims of people to participate in government were reflected and revised in the verbal and visual culture of the time. Their analyses provide fresh insights into cultural engagement as a means of resisting oppression and a sign of the resilience of humanity in facing threats and force.
Michael Demson is Associate Professor of English at Sam Houston State University.
Regina Hewitt is Professor of English at the University of South Florida.
Cover image: The Fall of Anarchy, Joseph Mallord William Turner, c.1833-4 © Tate, London 2019
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edinburghuniversitypress.com
ISBN 978-1-4744-2856-9
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List of contents
Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Contributors; Introduction, Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt; 1. Peterloo, Ambivalence, and Commemorative Culture, Stephen C. Behrendt; 2. The Sounds of Peterloo, Ian Haywood; 3. Henry Hunt's White Hat: The Long Tradition of Mute Sedition, Murray Pittock; 4. Staging Protest and Repression: Guy Fawkes in Post-Peterloo Performance, Frederick Burwick; 5. Responses to Peterloo in Scotland, 1819-1822, Gerard Carruthers; 6. 'The Most Portentous Event in Modern History': Ireland Before and After Peterloo, James Kelly; 7. Political Suicide: Castlereagh, Rebellion, and Self-Directed Violence, Michelle Faubert; 8. William Cobbett, 'Resurrection Man': The Peterloo Massacre and the Bones of Tom Paine, Katey Castellano; 9. The Church and Peterloo, John Gardner; 10. 'Reform or Convulsion': Jeremy Bentham and the Peterloo Massacre, Victoria Myers; 11. Wordsworth After Peterloo: The Persistence of War in The River Duddon . . . and other Poems, Philip Shaw; 12. Shelley's Poetry and Suffering, Michael Scrivener; Index.
About the author
Michael Demson is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of the Master's Program in English at Sam Houston State University, where he teaches courses in Romanticism, Literary Theory, and World Literature. He has published articles in European Romantic Review, Romanticism, Romantic Circles Praxis, among others, and his non-fiction graphic novel,
Masks of Anarchy: From Percy Shelley to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (Verso Books, 2013).Regina Hewitt is Professor of English at the University of South Florida. She is the editor of John Galt: Observations and Conjectures on Literature, History, and Society (Bucknell, 2012) and author of Symbolic Interactions: Social Problems and Literary Interventions in the Works of Baillie, Scott, and Landor (Bucknell, 2006). She has written and edited a range of other studies on social concerns in Romantic-era literature.
Summary
Two hundred years after the massacre of protestors in Manchester, known as Peterloo, distinguished scholars of Romantic-era literature join together in this commemorative volume to assess the implications of the violence.
