Republican Politics and English Poetry, 1789-1874 (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture)

Through the examination of a range of canonical and non-canonical authors--including Blake, Shelley, Cooper, Linton, Landor, Meredith, Thomson and Swinburne--Kuduk Weiner connects the formal strategies of republican poems to the political theory and expressive cultures of republican radicalism. "In the wake of the French Revolution, political theorists and activists advanced a coherent set of new democratic principles that form the foundation of our modern political world - the principles of Republicanism. The fate of that project was intertwined with the course of nineteenth-century English poetry. This study explores how poets who espoused republican political ideals sought to embody and advance those principles in their verse. By examining a range of canonical and non-canonical authors - including Blake, Shelley, Cooper, Linton, Landor, Meredith, Thomson and Swinburne - Kuduk Weiner connects the formal strategies of republican poems to the political theory and expressive cultures of republican radicalism. This study traces a strain of powerful, complex political poetry that casts new light on the political and literary history of nineteenth-century England."--Jacket In the wake of the French Revolution, political theorists and activists advanced a newly coherent set of democratic principles that form the foundation of our modern political world - the principles of Republicanism. The fate of that project was intertwined with the course of Nineteenth-century English poetry. This study explores how poets who espoused republican political ideals sought to embody and advance those principles in their verse. By examining a range of canonical and non-canonical authors- including Blake, Shelley, Cooper, Linton, Landor, Meredith, Thomson and Swinburne - Kuduk Weiner connects the formal strategies of republican poems to the political theory and expressive cultures of republican radicalism. This study traces a strain of powerful, complex political poetry that casts new light on the political and literary history of nineteenth-century England. This study explores how poets who espoused republican political ideals sought to embody and advance those principles in their verse. By examining a range of canonical and non-canonical authors-including Blake, Shelley, Cooper, Linton, Landor, Meredith, Thomson and Swinburne, Kuduk Weiner connects the formal strategies of republican poems to the political theory and expressive cultures of republican radicalism. Her new study traces a strain of powerful, complex political poetry that casts new light on the political and literary history of nineteenth-century England. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 9 Introduction......Page 10 1 Republican Demystification in Politics for the People and Blake’s Songs of Experience......Page 26 2 Two Defence[s] of Poetry: Shelley and the Newgate Magazine......Page 44 3 Cooper and Linton: Chartist Prophets and Craftsmen......Page 75 4 Landor, Clough, and European Republicanism......Page 106 5 Meredith, Thomson, and Swinburne, 1867–1874......Page 142 Conclusion......Page 186 Notes......Page 190 Index......Page 222

Weiner (Romantic and Victorian literature, Wesleyan U., US) examines republican political ideas in England during the period in the work of such poets who espoused republican ideals as William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, W.J. Linton, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. She shows how republican poems reflected and refracted the theories of political change that animated the expressive cultures of republican radicalism. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR