Beyond Romanticism New Approaches to Texts and Contexts 1780-1832

First published in 1992. Beyond Romanticism represents a substantial challenge to traditional views of the Romantic period and provides a sustained critique of ‘Romantic ideology’. The debates with which it engages had previously been under-represented in the study of Romanticism, where the claims of history had never had quite the same status as they have had in other periods, and where confidence in poetic literary value remains high. Individual essays examine the philosophical underpinnings of Romantic discourse; they survey analogous and competing discourses of the period such as mesmerism, Hellenism, orientalism and nationalism; and analyse both the manifestations of Romanticism in particular historical and textual moments, and the texts and modes of writing which have been historically marginalized or silenced by ‘the Romantic’. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

Notes on Contributors; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction Stephen Copley and John Whale 2. ‘A Shadow of Magnitude’: The Dialectic of Romantic Aesthetics Paul Hamilton 3. Land of the Giants: Gaps, Limits and Audiences in Coleridge’s ‘Biographia Literaria’ Stephen Bygrave 4. Shelley’s ‘Magnetic Ladies’: Romantic Mesmerism and the Politics of the Body Nigel Leask 5. ‘Jerusalem’ and Nationalism Susan Matthews 6. ‘The Voice Which is Contagion to the World’: The Bacchic in Shelley Michael Rossington 7. The Wanton Muse: Politics and Gender in Gothic Theory after 1760 Harriet Guest 8. Plagiarism with a Difference: Subjectivity in ‘Kubla Khan’ and ‘Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark’ Jane Moore 9. De Quincey and Women Angela Leighton 10. Women Writing and Revolution: Narratives of History and Sexuality in Wollstonecraft and Williams Vivien Jones 11. Wordsworth and the Use of Charity Robin Jarvis 12. Sacred Objects and the Sublime Ruins of Art John Whale; Bibliography; Index

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