Romanticism and Form [Hardcover]

This book offers new analyzes of canonical texts, contextualizations of Romantic forms in relation to war, nationalism and empire, reassessments of neglected and marginalized writers and explorations of the relationship between form and reader. It showcases a range of new approaches that are informed by deconstruction, theology and new technology.Notes on Contributors Introduction; A.Rawes Romantic Indirection; P.Curtis Conscript Fathers and Shuffling Recruits : Formal Self-Awareness in Romantic Poetry; M.O'Neill Romantic Invocation: a Form of Impossibility; G.Hopps Ruinous Perfection : Reading Authors and Writing Readers in the Romantic Fragment Poem; M.Sandy Combinatoric Form in Nineteenth-Century Satiric Prints; S.E.Jones Romantic Form and New Historicism: Wordsworth's Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey ; A.Rawes Southey's Forms of Experiment; N.Trott Believing in Form and Forms of Belief: the Case of Robert Southey; B.Beatty Seductions of Form in the Poetry of Ann Cristall and Charlotte Smith; J.Labbe Seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely : Byron's Poetry, Austen's Prose and Forms of Narrative Irony; C.Franklin What Constitutes a Reader? : Don Juan and the Changing Reception of Romantic Form; J.Stabler, A.Roberts, M.N.Carminati & M.H.Fischer Afterword; S.J.Wolfson Bibliography Index

'The critics assembled here are close readers, attentive to metre, stanza form, figures of speech, but they are not nostalgic for the New Criticism of the 1950s and 1960s. If they are formalists, they are formalists of a new kind, less likely to celebrate the unifying power of art than the fragmented and the multitudinous, more likely to acknowledge Byron than Wordsworth, but just as ready to study a satiric print, or a poem by Ann Cristall. This volume sets a challenging new agenda for Romantic Studies.' - Richard Cronin, Professor of English Literature, University of Glasgow, UK

BERNARD BEATTY Senior Fellow at the University olcb