Satire and Romanticism [Paperback]

This remarkable study of the constructive and ultimately canon-forming relationship between satiric and Romantic modes of writing from 1760 to 1832 provides us with a new understanding of the historical development of Romanticism as a literary movement. Romantic poetry is conventionally seen as inward-turning, sentimental, sublime, and transcendent, whereas satire, with its public, profane, and topical rhetoric, is commonly cast in the role of generic other as the un-Romantic mode. This book argues instead that the two modes mutually defined each other and were subtly interwoven during the Romantic period. By rearranging reputations, changing aesthetic assumptions, and re-distributing cultural capital, the interaction of satiric and Romantic modes helped make possible the Victorian and modern construction of 'English Romanticism'.Introduction: Satire and the Making of the Romantic Representing Rustics: Satire, Counter-Satire, and Emergent Romanticism 'Supernatural, or at Least Romantic': the Ancient Mariner and Parody Satiric Performance in The Black Dwarf Della Crusca Redivivus : the Revenge of the Satiric Victims Byron's Satiric 'Blues': Salon Culture and the Literary Marketplace Turning What was Once Burlesque into Romantic: Byron's Pantomimic Satire The Wheat from the Chaff: Ebenezer Elliott and the CanonSTEVEN E. JONES is Associate Professor of English at Loyola University in Chicago.