Enlightening Romanticism, Romancing the Enlightenment : British Novels From 1750 to 1832

As eighteenth-century scholarship expands its range, and disciplinary boundaries such as Enlightenment and Romanticism are challenged, novels published during the rich period from 1750 to 1832 have become a contested site of critical overlap. In this volume, scholars who typically write under the rubric of either the long eighteenth century or Romanticism examine novels often claimed by both scholarly periods. This shared enterprise opens new and rich discussions of novels and novelistic concerns by creating dialogue across scholarly boundaries. Dominant narratives, critical approaches, and methodological assumptions differ in important ways, but these differences reveal a productive tension. Among the issues engaged are the eighteenth-century novel's development of emotional interiority, including theories of melancholia; the troubling heritage of the epistolary novel for the 1790s radical novel; tensions between rationality and romantic affect; issues of aesthetics and politics; and constructions of gender, genre, and race. Rather than positing a simple opposition between an eighteenth-century Enlightenment of rationality, propriety, and progress and a Romantic Period of inspiration, heroic individualism, and sublime emotionality, these essays trace the putatively 'Romantic' in the early 1700s as well as the long legacy of 'Enlightenment' values and ideas well into the nineteenth century. The volume concludes with responses from Patricia Meyer Spacks and Stephen C. Behrendt, who situate the essays and elaborate on the stakes. Contents......Page 6 Notes on Contributors......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 11 Introduction: Enlightened Romanticism or Romantic Enlightenment?......Page 12 1 Novel Romanticism in 1751: Eliza Haywood’s Betsy Thoughtless......Page 32 2 The Melancholy Briton: Enlightenment Sources of the Gothic......Page 50 3 “Disagreeable Misconstructions”: Epistolary Trouble in Charlotte Smith’s Desmond......Page 66 4 Reason and Romance: Rethinking Romantic-Era Fiction Through Jane West’s The Advantages of Education......Page 80 5 The Politics of Masculinity in the 1790s Radical Novel: Hugh Trevor, Caleb Williams and the Romance of Sentimental Friendship......Page 98 6 The “Double Sense” of Honor: Revising Gendered Social Codes in Amelia Opie’s Adeline Mowbray......Page 122 7 Reading the Metropole: Elizabeth Hamilton’s Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah......Page 142 8 The Woman of Genius: In Praise of the Inchoate Future......Page 154 9 Frances Trollope’s America: From Enlightenment Aesthetics to Victorian Class......Page 174 Response Essay- How We See: The 1790s......Page 190 Response Essay- Cultural Transitions, Literary Judgments and the Romantic-Era British Novel......Page 200 Bibliography......Page 218 Index......Page 234 In this innovative volume, scholars who typically write under the rubric of either the long eighteenth century or Romanticism examine novels claimed by both scholarly periods. Rather than simply opposing an Enlightenment of rationality, propriety, and progress to a Romantic Period of inspiration, heroic individualism, and sublime emotionality.