The Politics of Romantic Poetry: In Search of the Pure Commonwealth (Romanticism in Perspective:Texts, Cultures, Histories)

In recent years critics of Romantic poetry have divided into two groups that have little to say to one another. One group, as yet the most numerous, insists that to study a poem is to investigate the historical circumstances out of which it was produced; the other retorts that poetry offers pleasures fully available only to readers whose attention is focused on their language. This book attempts to reconcile the two groups by arguing that a poet's most effective political action is the forging of a new language, and that the political import of a poem is a function of its style. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 9 Introduction......Page 10 Part One: The Revolutionary Years......Page 28 Introduction – Religious Musings......Page 30 1 Erasmus Darwin: from the Bastille to Birmingham......Page 38 2 William Blake and Revolutionary Prophecy......Page 57 3 The English Jacobins......Page 70 Part Two: The War against Napoleon......Page 92 Introduction – The Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo......Page 94 4 Walter Scott and Anti-Gallican Minstrelsy......Page 101 5 Wordsworth at War......Page 119 6 Mapping Childe Harold I and II......Page 137 Part Three: England in 1819......Page 154 Introduction – Peter Bell the Third......Page 156 7 Asleep in Italy: Byron and Shelley in 1819......Page 165 8 Leigh Hunt, Keats and the Politics of Cockney Poetry......Page 190 Notes......Page 209 Index......Page 230

Cronin (English, U. of Glasgow) argues that opposition between critics who focus on the historical circumstances out of which Romantic poems were produced, and those who emphasize the language out of which they are made is both false and constrictive. He takes up the premises that a poet's most effective political action is forging a new language, and that the political import of a poem is a function of its style. He describes poets speaking to a fragmented society, calling for a pure commonwealth that can only be secured by the purity of its language. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Times Literary Supplement

He is a master of his subject, and his book is the most ground-breaking critique of the Romantic movement to have appeared...

Critics of Romantic poetry have divided into two groups. One insists that to study a poem is to investigate the historical background, the other that poetry offers pleasures only to readers whose attention is focused on language