Britain's Bloodless Revolutions: 1688 and the Romantic Reform of Literature (Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print)

Britain's Bloodless Revolutions explores the relationship of the emerging category of Literature to the emerging threat of popular violence between the Bloodless Revolution and the Romantic turn from revolution to reform. The book argues that at a time when the political nature of the Bloodless Revolution became a subject of debate - in the period defined by France's famously bloody revolution - 'Literature' emerged as a kind of political institution and constituted a bloodless revolution in its own right. In 1688 an institutional change subordinated the monarchy to the parliament, in part to avert the violence of the recent past. A century later a radical print culture threatened to take this process a step further and subordinate parliament to "the voice of the people". This did not happen. A shift from an expansive, Enlightenment-based print culture to a private, imaginative realm of literature redirected the powerful and effects of print and subordinated politics to culture. Romantic-period writers found in 1688 a model for containing the threat of popular violence that had come to be linked with freedom of the press and freedom of association. Not only did they write endlessly about bloodless Revolution, reinventing it in the process; they also wrote as bloodless Revolution, enacting this new form of politics and reinventing literature itself in the process. Against a more traditional reading of Romanticism, one that sees a revolutionary literature emerge from a failure to revolt, this book argues that literature did not manifest this failure but in fact helped to occasion it Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 9 Introduction: 1688 and the Romantic Reform of Literature......Page 12 Part I Violence and the Pursuits of Literature......Page 36 1 Why Literature—not the People—Rose......Page 38 2 Lyrical Ballads and Terrorist Systems......Page 71 3 The Political Institution of Literature......Page 108 Part II From the Bloodless to the Romantic Revolution......Page 152 4 Jacobitism and Enlightenment......Page 154 5 Bloodless Revolution and the Form of the Novel......Page 181 Notes......Page 207 Bibliography......Page 223 C......Page 235 G......Page 236 M......Page 237 S......Page 238 W......Page 239 Z......Page 240

britain's Bloodless Revolutions Explores The Relationship Of The Emerging Category Of Literature To The Emerging Threat Of Popular Violence After The Bloodless Revolution. The Book Argues That At A Time When The Political Nature Of The Bloodless Revolution Became A Subject Of Debate--in The Period Defined By France's Famously Bloody Revolution--literature Emerged As A Kind Of political Institution And Constituted A Bloodless Revolution In Its Own Right.

"Britain's Bloodless Revolutions explores the relationship of the emerging category of Literature to the emerging threat of popular violence after the Bloodless Revolution. The book argues that at a time when the political nature of the Bloodless Revolution became a subject of debate--in the period defined by France's famously bloody revolution--"Literature" emerged as a kind of political institution and constituted a bloodless revolution in its own right." -- Publisher Machine generated contents note: List of IllustrationsIntroduction1. Changing the Subject: Aesthetic Displacement, Museum Display, and the French Revolution in The Prelude2. Facing History: Galleries and Portraits in Waverley's Historiography3. Reframing the National Imagination in Maria Edgeworth's Harrington4. Carving Out the Public Sphere: Romantic Literary Periodicals and the Elgin MarblesEpilogueBibliographyIndex. Material Culture and Sedition, 1688-1760 is a groundbreaking study of the ways in which material culture (and its associated designs, rituals and symbols) was used to avoid prosecution for treason and sedition in the British Isles. The fresh theoretical model it presents challenges existing accounts of the public sphere and consumer culture. This book argues that Romantic-era writers used the figure of the minstrel to imagine authorship as a social, responsive enterprise unlike the solitary process portrayed by Romantic myths of the lone genius. Simpson highlights the centrality of the minstrel to many important literary developments from the Romantic era through to the 1840s. Friendship and Allegiance explores the concept of friendship as it was defined, contested and distorted by writers of the early eighteenth century. Setting well-known canonical texts (The Beggar's Opera, Gulliver's Travels) alongside lesser-known works, it portrays a literary world renegotiating the meaning of public and private virtue.