The Two Romanticisms and other essays

The Two Romanticisms and other essays
Author: William Christie
Publisher: Sydney University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2016-06-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1743324642

The Romantic period is the most appealing but also the most confusing period of English literature for the student. Crucially, this book distinguishes between 'the Romantic' as modern critics use the term and 'the romantic' as it was used during the period itself. The Two Romanticisms, and Other Essays is a collection of critical essays on Romanticism and select Romantic texts, designed to help teachers and students to make sense of the period as a whole and of the poems and novels that appear most frequently on school and university curricula. Each chapter offers a self-contained reading of a different canonical work while engaging with broader themes. Through close readings of Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth, Professor Christie explores the complexities of the Romantic period and offers fresh insights into pivotal Romantic texts.

The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism

The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism
Author: David Duff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 800
Release: 2018-09-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191019712

The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism offers a comprehensive guide to the literature and thought of the Romantic period, and an overview of the latest research on this topic. Written by a team of international experts, the Handbook analyses all aspects of the Romantic movement, pinpointing its different historical phases and analysing the intellectual and political currents which shaped them. It gives particular attention to devolutionary trends, exploring the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish strands in 'British' Romanticism and assessing the impact of the constitutional changes that brought into being the 'United Kingdom' at a time of revolutionary turbulence and international conflict. It also gives extensive coverage to the publishing and reception history of Romantic writing, highlighting the role of readers, reviewers, publishers, and institutions in shaping Romantic literary culture and transmitting its ideas and values. Divided into ten sections, each containing four or five chapters, the Handbook covers key themes and concepts in Romantic studies as well as less chartered topics such as freedom of speech, literature and drugs, Romantic oratory, and literary uses of dialect. All the major male and female Romantic authors are included along with numerous lesser-known writers, the emphasis throughout being on the diversity of Romantic writing and the complexities and internal divisions of the culture that sustained it. The volume strikes a balance between familiarity and novelty to provide an accessible guide to current thinking and a conceptual reorganization of this fast-moving field.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2018-03-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192543717

By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened...' Frankenstein is the most celebrated horror story ever written. It tells the dreadful tale of Victor Frankenstein, a visionary young student of natural philosophy, who discovers the secret of life. In the grip of his obsession he constructs a being from dead body parts, and animates this creature. The results, for Victor and for his family, are catastrophic. Written when Mary Shelley was just eighteen, Frankenstein was inspired by the ghost stories and vogue for Gothic literature that fascinated the Romantic writers of her time. She transformed these supernatural elements an epic parable that warned against the threats to humanity posed by accelerating technological progress. Published for the 200th anniversary, this edition, based on the original 1818 text, explains in detail the turbulent intellectual context in which Shelley was writing, and also investigates how her novel has since become a byword for controversial practices in science and medicine, from manipulating ecosystems to vivisection and genetic modification. As an iconic study of power, creativity, and, ultimately, what it is to be human, Frankenstein continues to shape our thinking in profound ways to this day.

Jane Austen's Men

Jane Austen's Men
Author: Sarah Ailwood
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2019-08-14
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1000084787

This book illuminates Jane Austen’s exploration of masculinity through the courtship romance genre in the socially, politically and culturally turbulent Romantic era. Austen scrutinises, satirises, censures and ultimately rewrites dominant modes of masculinity through the courtship romance plot between her heroines and male protagonists. This book reveals that Austen pioneers and celebrates a new vision of masculinity that could complement the Romantic desire for agency, individualism and selfhood embodied in her heroines. Rewriting desirable masculinity as an internalised, psychologically complex and authentic gender identity – a model of manhood that drives the ongoing appeal and cultural power of her men in the twenty-first century – Austen explores both the challenges and the opportunities for male selfhood, romantic love and feminine agency. Jane Austen’s Men is among the first full-length works to explore Austen's male protagonists as textual constructions of masculinity. Sarah Ailwood reveals the depth of Austen's engagement with her predecessors and contemporaries, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane West and Jane Porter, on critical questions of masculinity and its relationship to femininity and narrative form. This book illuminates in new ways Jane Austen’s ambitions for the novel, and the political power of the courtship romance genre in the Romantic era.

Politics and Emotions in Romantic Periodicals

Politics and Emotions in Romantic Periodicals
Author: Jock Macleod
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-12-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030324672

This book comprises eleven essays by leading scholars of early nineteenth-century British literature and periodical culture. The collection addresses the many and varied links between politics and the emotions in Romantic periodicals, from the revolutionary decade of the 1790s, to the 1832 Reform Bill. In so doing, it deepens our understanding of the often conflicted relations between politics and feelings, and raises questions relevant to contemporary debates on affect studies and their relation to political criticism. The respective chapters explore both the politics of emotion and the emotional register of political discussion in radical, reformist and conservative periodicals. They are arranged chronologically, covering periodicals from Pigs’ Meat to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and the Spectator. Recurring themes include the contested place of emotion in radical political discourse; the role of the periodical in mediating action and performance; the changing affective frameworks of cultural politics (especially concerning gender and nation), and the shifting terrain of what constitutes appropriate emotion in public political discourse.

Tribute and Trade

Tribute and Trade
Author: William Christie
Publisher: Sydney University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1743325991

In the 18th and 19th centuries, relations between China and the West were defined by the Qing dynasty’s strict restrictions on foreign access and by the West’s imperial ambitions. Cultural, political and economic interactions were often fraught, with suspicion and misunderstanding on both sides. Yet trade flourished and there were instances of cultural exchange and friendship, running counter to the official narrative. Tribute and Trade: China and Global Modernity explores encounters between China and the West during this period and beyond, into the early 20th century, through examples drawn from art, literature, science, politics, music, cooking, clothing and more. How did China and the West see each other, how did they influence each other, and what were the lasting legacies of this contact?

The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature

The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature
Author: Geraint Evans
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 857
Release: 2019-04-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1107106761

This book is a comprehensive single-volume history of literature in the two major languages of Wales from post-Roman to post-devolution Britain.

Teaching Romanticism

Teaching Romanticism
Author: D. Higgins
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2010-01-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0230276482

Romanticism is taught at universities across the globe and is considered integral to the study of British and European literature. This book, written by leading academics, presents innovative, practical approaches to teaching traditional and newer aspects of the curriculum and is essential to anyone teaching Romanticism at university level.

Memory and Foresight in the Celtic World

Memory and Foresight in the Celtic World
Author: Lorna G. Barrow
Publisher: Sydney University Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2020-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1743327145

Memory and Foresight in the Celtic World delves deep into the experience of Celtic communities and individuals in the late medieval period through to the modern age. Its thirteen essays range widely, from Scottish soldiers in France in the fifteenth century to Gaelic-speaking communities in rural New South Wales in the twentieth, and expatriate Irish dancers in the twenty-first. Connecting them are the recurring themes of memory and foresight: how have Celtic communities maintained connections to the past while keeping an eye on the future? Chapters explore language loss and preservation in Celtic countries and among Celtic migrant communities, and the influence of Celtic culture on writers such as Dylan Thomas and James Joyce. In Australia, how have Irish, Welsh and Scottish migrants engaged with the politics and culture of their home countries, and how has the idea of a Celtic identity changed over time? Drawing on anthropology, architecture, history, linguistics, literature and philosophy, Memory and Foresight in the Celtic World offers diverse, thought-provoking insights into Celtic culture and identity.