British Romanticism

The Unnatural Creature: How the Production of Knowledge reflects Western Cultural History in Frankenstein

by David Price

Conference Paper for Panel on Post-colonialism - St. John's Grad Conference May 2012

Plato's presence in Blake's works

by Tibor Tarcsay

Another seminar paper, which I once upon a time inteded to elaborate into an article.

The paper examines the influence of Platonic and Neoplatonist ideas in Blake's oevure, and evaluates Blake's changing... more The paper examines the influence of Platonic and Neoplatonist ideas in Blake's oevure, and evaluates Blake's changing attitude towards Plato.

"Civic Virtues in the Restless Polity: Sir Walter Scott’s Fergusonian Vision of British Civil Society in Redgauntlet (1824)."

by Katrin Berndt

SECC – Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 41 (March 2012): 32-56.

Up Helly Aa: an ancient Viking festival?

by Brydon Leslie

Published in: The New Shetlander, 258, 2011, p.7-9

Shelley's Green Desert

by Tim Morton

Published in Jonathan Bate, ed., Studies in Romanticism 35.3 (1996), 409–430.

An in-depth account of the ecological poetics of Percy Shelley. An in-depth account of the ecological poetics of Percy Shelley.

Barbauld’s Richardson and the Canonisation of Personal Character

by Sören Hammerschmidt

Forthcoming in Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Winter 2012)

In The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (1804), Anna Letitia Barbauld set out to assure readers that the novelist’s... more In The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (1804), Anna Letitia Barbauld set out to assure readers that the novelist’s personal character (as displayed in his letters) corresponded to his authorial moral character (as inferred through his novels) in order to present him as an appropriate father of the modern British novel – a process I call the “canonisation of private character.” To that end, Barbauld’s editorial work presented Richardson as a benevolent patriarchal figure whose moral authority over the domestic life of his extended family guaranteed the morality of his novels and of his personal character. As my case study of Richardson’s correspondence with Sarah Wescomb shows, Barbauld’s interventions accordingly muted challenges to Richardson’s authority on questions of paternal control or filial obedience. Life writing, textual criticism, and literary history were therefore so intimately intertwined in Barbauld’s treatment of Richardson and his writings that they mutually constituted and sustained each other. Her contributions to the elevation and institution of novels as a national literary genre – in the Correspondence as well as in her later prefaces to The British Novelists (1810) – accordingly should be read in conjunction with her biographical elevation and canonisation of Richardson as the first properly moral, modern novelist.

Alan Richardson. The Neural Sublime: Cognitive Theories and Romantic Texts (2010).

by Peter Heymans

Review published in Romanticism 18.1 (2012): 127-28.

Romantic Disease Discourse: Disability, Immunity, and Literature

by Fuson Wang

published in "Nineteenth-Century Contexts," vol. 33, issue 5, November 2011.

This paper tracks the origin of medical immunity in a Romantic disease discourse that depends at least as much on... more This paper tracks the origin of medical immunity in a Romantic disease discourse that depends at least as much on literary representation as it does on medical research. In this discussion of immunity, the author recovers a lost history of a Romantic-era medico-literary practice that productively informs modern debates about biopolitics, disability theory, and narrative medicine. In particular, the paper relies on the case study of smallpox and vaccination to argue for a recuperative literary history that challenges Foucauldian narratives about the rise of pathology and the institutional coercion of the medical gaze.

The Romantic Cow: Animals as Technology

by Ron Broglio

Mapping British Earth and Sky

by Ron Broglio

An essay concerning Burke's idea of the Sublime

by Thomas Heij

The second best known theoretical work of the Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke, 'A Philosophical Enquiry... more The second best known theoretical work of the Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke, 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of ou Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful' (1957), is overshadowed by Burke's political work. But although the 'Enquiry' is not Burke's magnum opus, it still is a very important work that deserves more attention than it gets these days, for several reasons.
In the first part of this paper we will examine Burke's Enquiry, focusing on his concept of the Sublime. In the second part I hope to point out some of the similarities between Burke's theory and William Turner's practical application of those rules, by studying some of his famous paintings.

Eating Girls: Becoming-Animal and the Romantic Sublime in William Blake’s Lyca Poems

by Peter Heymans

Published in Humanimalia - a journal of human/animal interface studies (DePauw University); Volume 3, Number 1 - Fall 2011.

This article argues that Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming-animal is aesthetically as well as structurally... more This article argues that Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming-animal is aesthetically as well as structurally related to the discourse of the sublime. It investigates the species politics of both concepts and illustrates their ecocritical potential with an analysis of William Blake’s Lyca poems, “The Little Girl Lost” and “The Little Girl Found,” both published in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794).

Read full article:
http://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia/issue%2005/pdfs/heymans%20pdf.pdf

'Vaishnavpadabali': Lyricism, Romanticism and the Indian Literary Tradition (Abstract to the Paper)

by Shantanu Majee

Co-authored with Madhurima Neogi, this paper was presented at the CSRL (Centre for Studies in Romantic Literature) 2010 Conference.

The paper focuses on the exploring of the various nuances of Vaishnava love poetry from which one can arrive at some... more The paper focuses on the exploring of the various nuances of Vaishnava love poetry from which one can arrive at some specific features of the Romantic thought as it developed in India. The passion of Radha and Krishna being the central theme of this poetic tradition, it affords one the opportunity of studying the treatment of emotions and effects as formulated by the poets like Jaydev, Vidyapati, Chandidasa and others. Although neither Radha nor the pair of Radha and Krishna is the subject of any known major work prior to Jaydev’s Gitagovinda, their treatment in the stray verses of many prior literary works renders authenticity to Jaydev's claim that he is basing his poem on a known theme. In fact, Prakrit love poetry from the Gathasaptasati of Satavahana Hala provides the earliest instance of the poetic appropriation to this love story. Thus the presentation also attempts to assess the traditions of love poetry that lead upto the bards of Bengal and Mithila. Overall, Vaishnavpadavali, by its evocation of a lingering lyricism, “shringar rasa” as the oldest aesthetic tenet in India, and the mingling boundaries of the finite and the infinite, point to an endless mystery of life thereby bestowing a marked character to Indian Romantic Literature. There lie embedded in it the roots of many of the aesthetic principles to be later taken up and modified by the British Romantics, be it the relation between man and nature or the sense of melancholy lying at the heart of all things beautiful. Vaishnavpadavali, in its profoundly pantheistic flavour, also sing the notes of “advaita” philosophy so integral to the Indian thought. So one can observe the curious convergences and divergences between British Romanticism and Romantic thought as is reflected in Vaishnava love poetry which makes the later, if not an alternate, at least a prominently individual branch of Romantic aesthetics. The paper also tries to examine how this tradition throbs steady in a much later poet Tagore who was exposed to and heavily influenced by the British Romantics, with Shelley in particular. Not entering the labyrinthine alleys of theology, the paper concentrates mostly on a critical study of Vaishnavpadavali by analyzing some specific pada-s to delve into a general exploration of the domain.

Social Authorship and the Mediation of Memory in Anne Grant’s Poetry

by Sören Hammerschmidt

Forthcoming in Female Authorship and Regional Romanticism. Ed. Sandro Jung. Spec. issue of Women’s Writing (August 2012).

Sometime in the early 1820s, the Scottish writer Anne Grant (1755–1838) compiled a manuscript miscellany, the product... more Sometime in the early 1820s, the Scottish writer Anne Grant (1755–1838) compiled a manuscript miscellany, the product of Grant’s involvement in extensive networks of poetic exchange. In fact, most of Grant’s poetic output could be characterized in this way since, as her surviving correspondence and the poems themselves attest, Grant composed the vast majority of her verse for specific occasions, at the request of, or as gifts for, friends and family. The manuscript miscellany, then, can serve to exemplify Grant’s poetic activities throughout her writing life, for it encapsulates the conditions under which she composed and circulated verse. Moreover, the miscellany functioned as a memorial to the social networks that the circulation of poetry had helped to create and to the individuals involved. As each poem indexed friends and affective relationships, it formed a node not only in Grant’s social circles but in her memories of those circles as well. As a result, the compilation and annotation of poems within the miscellany, as much as the poems’ texts themselves, mediated Grant’s memories of her familiar circles and their poetic productions to those who had access to the volume. Her assembly, inscription, and repeated rereading of the poems thus turned habits of writing and reading commemorative poetry into technologies for the remediation of memory.

"Authorizing The Baviad: William Gifford and The Satires of Juvenal." European Romantic Review 12 (2001), 206-15.

by Michael Gamer

"'Torn from its Genus': Hannah Cowley on Comedy, Laughter, Morality." Co-written with Jeffrey N. Cox. Liberty, Emancipation and Freedom in Romantic British Theatre. Ed. Gioia Angelletti. Parma: University of Parma Press, 2010. Pages 77-106.

by Michael Gamer

"National Supernaturalism: Joanna Baillie, Germany, and the Legitimation of Gothic Drama." Theatre Survey 38:2 (November 1997): 49-88.

by Michael Gamer

"Genres for the Prosecution: Pornography and the Gothic." PMLA 114 (1999): 1043-54.

by Michael Gamer

"Authors in Effect: Lewis, Scott, and the Gothic Drama." ELH: English Literary History 66 (1999): 831-61.

by Michael Gamer

"Unanswerable Gallantry and Thick-Headed Nonsense: Rereading Box Hill." Romantic Circles: Praxis. Re-reading Box Hill: The Practice of Reading the Practice of Everyday Life. Feb. 2000. Ed. William Galperin.

by Michael Gamer