Eternity in British Romantic Poetry [Hardcover]

Eternity in British Romantic Poetry adopts an original approach to Romanticism to explore the dominant intellectual preoccupation of the period: the relationship between the mortal and the eternal. This monograph offers a paradigm-shifting examination of the aesthetic and philosophical power of this crucial yet strangely neglected concern of Romantic poetry.Eternity in British Romantic Poetry explores the representation of the relationship between eternity and the mortal world in the poetry of the period. It offers an original approach to Romanticism that demonstrates, against the grain, the dominant intellectual preoccupation of the era: the relationship between the mortal and the eternal. The project's scope is two-fold: firstly, it analyses the prevalence and range of images of eternity (from apocalypse and afterlife to transcendence) in Romantic poetry; secondly, it opens up a new and more nuanced focus on how Romantic poets imagined and interacted with the idea of eternity. Every poet featured in the book seeks and finds their uniqueness in their apprehension of eternity. From Blake's assertion of the Eternal Now to Keats's defiance of eternity, Wordsworth's 'two consciousnesses' versus Coleridge's capacious poetry, Byron's swithering between versions of eternity compared to Shelleyan yearning, and Hemans's superlative account of everlasting female suffering, each poet finds new versions of eternity to explore or reject. This monograph sets out a paradigm-shifting approach to the aesthetic and philosophical power of eternity in Romantic poetry.Introduction: 'Demand No Direr Name': Eternity in British Romantic Poetry
1. 'All is done as I have told': Blake's Eternal Prophecy
2. Wordsworth: Sight, Vision, and Eternity
3. Coleridge and the Hunger for Eternity
4. 'Heaven's Brandy': Byron's Changing Eternity
5. Desire and Eternity in Shelley's Poetry
6. Defying Eternity in Keats's Poetry
7. Hemans's Records of Woman and the Eternity of Female Sufl£.