The romantic paradox : love, violence, and the uses of romance, 1760-1830

Why are there so few "happily ever afters" in the Romantic-period verse romance? Why do so many poets utilize the romance and its parts to such devastating effect? Why is gender so often the first victim? The Romantic Paradox investigates the prevalence and death in the poetic romances of the Della Cruscans, Coleridge, Keats, Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon, and Byron, and posits that understanding the romance and its violent tendencies is vital to understanding Romanticism itself. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Preface and Acknowledgements......Page 10 Introduction......Page 12 1 Reviving the Romance: What's Love Got to Do with It?......Page 22 Critical chivalry......Page 27 The aesthetics of vicarious fear......Page 42 'Abortive thoughts that right and wrong confound'......Page 50 The erotics of apostrophe: emotional bondage......Page 54 Epistolary romance: Della Crusca and Anna Matilda anthologised......Page 64 3 Failing the Romance: Coleridge, Keats and the Wilted Hero......Page 78 En/Gaging the hero: Coleridge......Page 84 Detumescence: Keats......Page 95 4 Interrupting the Romance: Robinson, Hemans and Dead Men......Page 109 Deflected violence and dream-visions: Mary Robinson......Page 114 Love with death: Felicia Hemans......Page 132 5 Transforming the Romance: the Murderous Worlds of Byron and Landon......Page 146 The confusion and subversion of the natural order of things': Byron......Page 153 'Grief, disappointment, the fallen leaf, the faded flower, the broken heart, the early grave': Letitia Landon......Page 169 Notes......Page 186 Bibliography......Page 212 Index......Page 220 Why are there so few happily ever afters' in the Romantic-period verse romance? Why do so many poets utilise the romance and its parts to such devastating effect? Why is gender so often the first victim? The Romantic Paradox investigates the prevalence of violence and death in the poetic romances of the Romantic period, and discovers that poets in the period under discussion were also highly skilled at dismembering the genre, allowing its parts - the quest, the hero, the love relationship, the supernatural - to stand in for, even replace, the whole narrative. The violence done to genre reflects the violence condoned by genre: during the Romantic period, the romance systematically destroyed itself. In her exploration of the poetry of the Della Cruscans, Coleridge, Keats, Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon and Byron, Labbe posits that understanding the romance and its violent tendencies is vital to understanding Romanticism itself Why are there so few 'happily ever afters' in the Romantic-period verse romance? Why do so many poets utilise the romance and its parts to such devastating effect? Why is gender so often the first victim? The Romantic Paradox investigates the prevalence of death in the poetic romances of the Della Cruscans, Coleridge, Keats, Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon, and Byron, and posits that understanding the romance and its violent tendencies is vital to understanding Romanticism itself.