Romanticism

Romantic writers worked during one of the most momentous epochs of westerncultural history. It was an epoch defined by responses to the revolutionarypolitics wh... » 

Romantic writers worked during one of the most momentous epochs of westerncultural history. It was an epoch defined by responses to the revolutionarypolitics which were epitomized by the French Revolution. Romanticism tracesthe major writers terms and debates associated with the genre. It surveysvarious readings by contemporaries of Romanticism and brings the survey up todate by considering poststructuralist new historicist and genderorientedperpectives on the subject.In a volume which is theoretically informed yet accessible and jargonfreeAidan Day summarizes changing views of Romanticism in relation to what hasuntil recently been seen as the canon of British Romantic writers WilliamBlake William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor Coleridge Lord Byron Percy ByssheShelley and John Keats. The writings of these poets still the basis of manyreadings of Romanticism are placed in the context of political andphilosophical thinkers such as Edmund Burke Thomas Paine and MaryWollstonecraft. At the same time the issues raised in the book are discussedin relation to a wide range of other writers of the period both canonical andnoncanonical from Jane Austen and Robert Burns to Charlotte Smith and AnnaLaetitia Barbauld. «