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The literature of the Romantic era is steeped in the politics of revolution and reaction. This Companion looks at first and second generation poets such as Wordsworth, Blake, Byron and Shelley and explores their engagement with the turbulent history of their times. Other genres such as drama, fiction and travel writing are also discussed, with close attention paid to texts by Walpole, Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft. Combining thematic analysis with modern critical perspectives, the volume also includes key contextual sections focusing on “Imagination, Truth and Reason”, “Heroes and Anti-heroes” and “Faith, Myth and Doubt”.
List of contents
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: A Cultural Overview
Part Three: Texts, Writers and Contexts
Writing in Revolution: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and William Wordsworth
Extended commentary: Wordsworth, The Prelude (1850), Book IX, lines 436– 504
Revolution, Reaction and the Natural World: Wordsworth and Coleridge, John Clare and William Blake
Extended commentary: Blake, ‘The Tyger’ from Songs of Experience (1793)
Dramatic writing: Horace Walpole, Robert Southey and Lord Byron
Extended commentary: Walpole, The Mysterious Mother (1768), V.i.312–420
Romantic Verse Narratives: John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Extended commentary: ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Mariner’ (1817), lines 1–40 and 610–17
Romantic Fiction: James Hogg, Thomas Love Peacock and Jane Austen
Extended commentary: Austen, Persuasion (1816), Chapter 23
Romantic Travel Writing: William Beckford, Lord Byron and Mary Wollstonecraft
Extended commentary: Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), Letters 16 and 17
Part Four: Critical Theories and Debates
Imagination, Truth and Reason
Faith, Myth and Doubt
Heroes and Ant-Heroes
Forms of Ruin
Part Five: References and resources
Timeline
Further reading
Index
About the author
Dr John Gilroy (BA Newcastle: MPhil Warwick: Cert.Ed. Leeds) lectures part-time in the English Department of Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. He is a lecturer for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education and is a course director for its international and residential programmes. His most recent publications are contributions on Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats for The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature (Steven R. Serafin & Valerie Grosvenor-Myer eds, Continuum, 2003), Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Poems, 2007 (www.Humanities-Ebooks.co.uk) and Philip Larkin: Selected Poems, 2009 (www.Humanities-Ebooks.co.uk). He is interested in all aspects of British Romanticism and is currently researching material on the significance of early aeronautics in the Romantic period.
Summary
The literature of the Romantic era is steeped in the politics of revolution and reaction. This volume looks at first and second generation poets such as Wordsworth, Blake, Byron and Shelley and explores their engagement with the turbulent history of their times. Other genres such as drama, fiction and travel writing are also discussed, with close attention paid to texts by Walpole, Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft. Combining thematic analysis with modern critical perspectives, the volume also includes key contextual sections focusing on “Imagination, Truth and Reason”, “Heroes and Anti-heroes” and “Faith, Doubt and Myth”.
