Writing Romanticism: Charlotte Smith And William Wordsworth, 1784-1807 (palgrave Studies In The Enlightenment, Romanticism And Cultures Of Print)

What is 'Wordsworthian' Romanticism and how did it evolve? This book argues that only by reading Charlotte Smith's poetry in tandem with William Wordsworth's can this question be answered, demonstrating their mutual contribution to the creation of the 'Wordsworthian', through literary analysis and historical contextualizing of their writings. What is Wordsworthian Romanticism and how did it evolve? What happens if we read the poetry of Charlotte Smith into the equation? This book argues that what we have commonly labeled the 'Wordsworthian' in fact emerges from the sustained attention the young Wordsworth paid to the thematics of place, history, memory, and subjectivity in Smith's work: a Smithian poetics. What follows is a period of mutual reading, each poet attuned to and absorbing the work of the other, in a virtual partnership more productive to the development of English poetry than any other of the period. Although they met only once, their work shows, throughout the 1790s and until Smith's death in 1806, a common devotion to innovation and experimentation that establishes Romantic poetry. This book demonstrates that the two poets co-wrote a poetics that stands for many readers as representatively Romantic, and represents a significant and original re-evaluation of the Romantic period Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-18 Writing the Lyrical Ballad: Hybridity and Self-Reflexity....Pages 19-48 Mediating History: War Poetry....Pages 49-77 Subject to Place, Subjected by Poetry....Pages 78-105 Modeling the Romantic Poet....Pages 106-145 1807: The Art of Poetry on a New Plan....Pages 146-174 Conclusion....Pages 175-179 Back Matter....Pages 180-218 "Writing Romanticism makes an essential contribution to the study of the poetry of the early Romantic period by providing the first proper account of the artistic cross-fertilization that occurred between Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth. A must for anyone interested in the history of English Romanticism."--Professor Robert Miles, University of Victoria, Canada