Dante and Italy in British Romanticism (Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters)

From the artistic practice of improvisation to the politics of nationalism, the essays in this volume break new ground and significantly extend our understanding of the relations between British and Italian culture in its analysis of the reception of Dante and Italian literature in British Romanticism. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-13 Wordsworth’s Italian Encounters....Pages 15-28 Sitting in Dante’s Throne: Wordsworth and Italian Nationalism....Pages 29-37 Byron Between Ariosto and Tasso....Pages 39-53 Byron and Alfieri....Pages 55-61 Picturing Byron’s Italy and Italians: Finden’s Illustrations to Byron’s Life and Works....Pages 63-75 Realms without a Name: Shelley and Italy’s Intenser Day....Pages 77-91 Epipsychidion, Dante, and the Renewable Life....Pages 93-104 The Poetry of Philology: Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy and Mary Shelley’s Valperga....Pages 105-116 Hemans’s Record of Dante: “The Maremma” and the Intertextual Poetics of Plenitude....Pages 117-131 Germaine de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy (1807) and the Performance of Romanticism(s)....Pages 133-142 Coleridge, Sgricci, and the Shows of London: Improvising in Print and Performance....Pages 143-159 Masaniello on the London Stage....Pages 161-182 Re-Visioning Rimini: Dante in the Cockney School....Pages 183-203 “Syllables of the Sweet South”: The Sound of Italian in the Romantic Period....Pages 205-224 Back Matter....Pages 225-258 "Starting with a new understanding of what Romantic-era literature is--and who wrote it--the essays here reassess British Romanticism in light of Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Alfieri, and contemporary Italian figures such as Paganini and the improvvisatore Tommaso Sgricci. The British absorption of Italian literature and culture was mediated by authors residing in Florence, Naples, Pisa, and Rome, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hunt, Byron, the Shelleys, and Hemans. Providing insights on topics from the artistic practice of improvisation to the politics of nationalism, this volume ... extends our understanding between the relations between British and Italian culture."-- From publisher's description Participating in the current trend to move beyond national boundaries, these essays examine the influences of Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Alfieri, and other major Italian writers on British writers who spent time in Italy: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hunt, Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Felicia Hemans. Providing insight on topics from the artistic practice of improvisation to the politics of nationalism, this volume breaks new ground and significantly extend our understanding of the relations between British and Italian culture "Although not the first book to deal with the reception of Dante and Italian literature in British Romanticism, Dante and Italy in British Romanticism is not a reiteration of what has already been explored elsewhere. From the artistic practice of improvisation to the politics of nationalism, the essays in this volume break new ground and significantly extend our understanding of the relations between British and Italian culture"--Provided by publisher