Full Description
More than any other period of British literature, Romanticism is strongly identified with a single genre. Romantic poetry has been one of the most enduring, best loved, most widely read and most frequently studied genres for two centuries and remains no less so today. This Companion offers a comprehensive overview and interpretation of the poetry of the period in its literary and historical contexts. The essays consider its metrical, formal, and linguistic features; its relation to history; its influence on other genres; its reflections of empire and nationalism, both within and outside the British Isles; and the various implications of oral transmission and the rapid expansion of print culture and mass readership. Attention is given to the work of less well-known or recently rediscovered authors, alongside the achievements of some of the greatest poets in the English language: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Scott, Burns, Keats, Shelley, Byron and Clare.
Contents
Introduction: the companionable forms of Romantic poetry James Chandler and Maureen N. McLane; 1. The living pantheon of poets in 1820: pantheon or canon? Jeffrey N. Cox; 2. Romantic poetry and antiquity Nick Groom; 3. Romantic meter and form Susan Stewart; 4. Romantic poetry and the standardisation of English Andrew Elfenbein; 5. Thinking in verse Simon Jarvis; 6. Romantic poetry and the romantic novel Ann Wierda Rowland; 7. Wordsworth's Great Ode: Romanticism and the progress of poetry James Chandler; 8. Romantic poetry, sexuality, gender Adriana Craciun; 9. Poetry peripheries and empire Tim Fulford; 10. Romantic poetry and the science of nostalgia Kevis Goodman; 11. Rethinking Romantic poetry and history: lyric resistance, lyric seduction William Keach; 12. The medium of Romantic poetry Celeste Langan and Maureen N. McLane; 13. Romantic poets and contemporary poetry Andrew Bennett; Index.
