Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem [Hardcover]

This book explores the self-conscious poem - that is, a poem concerned with poetry that displays awareness of itself as poetry - in the work of the major Romantic poets, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Michael O'Neill's readings freshly illuminate the imaginative distinction of many famous and often-studied poems, and revalue less regarded works. An extended coda looks at some post-Romantic poets, particularly Yeats, Stevens, Auden, and Clampitt, in the light of the book's central theme.

Acknowledgements
Note on Texts and Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I. The First Generation
1. And I staind the water clear: Blake
2. The words he uttered . . .: Wordsworth
3. That done in air: Coleridge
PART 2. The Second Generation
4. A being more intense: Byron
5. The mind which feeds this verse: Shelley (1)
6. The sensitive plant: Evaluation and the Self-Conscious Poem: Shelley (2)
7. The reading of an ever-changing tale: Keats (1)
8. Writing and History inHyperionandThe Fall of Hyperion: Keats (2)
CODA. The Post-Romantic Self-Conscious Poem
9. Yeats and Stevens: Two Versions of Post-Romantic Self-Consciousness
10. Making and Faking: W. H. Auden
11. The knowledge of contrast, feeling for light and shade: Amy Clampitt'sVoyages: A Homage to John Keats
Biobliography
Index

Pleasure is a powerful and revitalising force in this volume....The generosity with which these insights are sprinkled throughout the book is the result both of O'Neill's formidable poetic intelligence and of reading and reflection over a number of years. Fostered by scholarship and slow timeRomanticism and the Self-Conscious Poemis a searching work of lasting value. It is in all senses a masterpiece. --The Wordsworth Circle