British Romanticism Research Articles

Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism by Nicholas Mason

572 BOOK REVIEWS a good deal from Jon Mee’s work on enthusiasm and regulation in particu­ lar will appreciate the explanatory model made possible by Fairclough’s thoughtful and provocative reorientation of sympathy from individual ex­ change to collective politics. John Bugg Fordham University Nicholas Mason. Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Pp. 216. $49-95The astringencies of publishing history are always tonic. Nicholas Mason’s Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism is an illuminating reminder of the importance of economics and system in the production of the literature that we have come to call Romantic. Mason opens his study with two anecdotes that sketch the decline from high literary ideals to market realism in the book trade. The first concerns the founding of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Although William Black­ wood intended an independent and impartial magazine, Blackwood’s quickly made a graceless dive into “the mire ofliterary puffery” (7). Regu­ lar contributors like John Gibson Lockhart and John Wilson reviewed each other with shameless enthusiasm. Mason follows this edifying vignette of Romantic logrolling with a modern instance: Amazon’s swift turn from “savior” of literature into sales agent, as it merged its initially independent editorial staff with the marketing division and began to sell packaged re­ views and prominent placement to authors and publishers. But Mason’s purpose here is not simply to moralize over hucksterism among minor Romantic literati and today’s global booksellers: he wishes to explore the connections between literary idealism and the marketplace. He sets out four broad claims: 1. That literature and advertising share a “common genealogy”—in fact, they “co-produced each other”; 2. That “periodical criticism and the author function were born out of the advertising logic that permeated Britain in what has come to be called the ‘Romantic Cen­ tury’” (5); 3. That modern advertising methods generally originate in the book trade; and 4. That this same detested advertising culture inspired and continues to inspire literary idealism. Mason lays out his case with uncommon care, clarity, and a welcome dash of sly humor. Chapter One begins with a consideration of George Henry Francis’s 1852 essay in Fraser’s Magazine, “The Science of Puffing,” which neatly anticipates one part of Mason’s argument and confirms anSiR , 54 (Winter 2015) BOOK REVIEWS 573 other. Francis clearly sees advertising as both “a system” and “scientifically employed” (12); he dates the establishment of this system to the early part of the century, and he assumes that advertising and literature are entwined. Francis does not support his claims—he apparently considers them so obvi­ ous as to need no argument or evidence—but Mason does. He carefully lays out the scholarship supporting the claim that advertising began earlier in the 19th century and that it is entangled with literature. This effectively clears the ground for Mason’s own argument. Chapter Two traces the development ofpuffery in the book trade. William Caxton, who not only introduced the printing press to Britain but also created the first print ad, epitomizes the common genealogy of literature and advertis­ ing. Mason then shifts to other exemplary figures, such as Alexander Pope, who benefited greatly from various publicity schemes, and Samuel Rich­ ardson, who managed to arrange for puffs of his Pamela in pulpit, in be­ spoke article, in the book itself (with carefully placed testimonies), and per­ haps even through a denunciatory pamphlet that conveniently pointed out the lubricious passages of the novel. Mason then widens his scope to con­ sider the Ralph Griffith’s Monthly Review, which “can be said to have fur­ ther accelerated the incursion of advertising logic into the production and dissemination ofliterature” (45). By 1770, puffing had become fairly com­ mon in the world of books and bookselling. Sheridan’s 1779 The Critic makes this clear, as its satire details the means and modes ofthe puffsharply. By the time of Sheridan’s play, advertising had become routine: there were professional critics, they worked according to a system, and they were ac­ cepted in this role. Chapters Three and Four present a pair of compelling case studies in the entanglement of literature...

Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer ed. by Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt (review)

Reviewed by: Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer ed. by Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt Rosemary Greentree Brewer, Charlotte, and Barry Windeatt, eds, Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2013; hardback; pp. 328; R.R.P. £50.00; ISBN 978184384542. Threads of admiration and affection for Derek Brewer and his contributions to medieval literary studies unite this collection. An Introduction by Barry Windeatt and Charlotte Brewer and Afterword by E. G. Stanley frame the essays, and Derek Pearsall explores Brewer’s career in ‘Derek Brewer: Chaucerian Studies 1953–78’. Several contributors examine the historical reception of Brewer’s interests in the context of critical opinion, and some deepen or extend them. Essays of the former kind include those of R. F. Yeager (‘Gowerian Laughter’), James Simpson (‘Derek Brewer’s Romance’), Elizabeth Archibald (‘Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles’), and A. S. G. Edwards (‘Manuscripts, Facsimiles and Approaches to Editing’). These offer valuable guides to changing attitudes and opinions. Brewer’s views may be starting points for the writers’ deliberations. Alistair Minnis considers ‘Brewer’s Chaucer and the Knightly Virtues’, and the Knight’s reputation. Christopher Cannon weighs the significance of fluency in French in ‘Class Distinction and the French of England’. Corinne Saunders’s ‘“Greater love hath no man”: Friendship in Medieval English Romance’ traces the topic in various sources. Helen Cooper’s fascinating essay, ‘The Ends of Storytelling’, probes most deeply into its theme, to find a search to explain death, even when the work begins by evoking spring, as The Canterbury Tales does. Several essays elaborate Brewer’s thoughts on Troilus and Criseyde. A. C. Spearing demonstrates implications of ‘Time in Troilus and Criseyde’. Mary Carruthers probes Troilus’s behaviour in ‘Virtue, Intention and the Mind’s Eye in Troilus and Criseyde’, as the hero attempts to control his memory and imagination. Jill Mann writes zestfully of ‘Falling in Love in the Middle Ages’, seeing it as ‘the supreme adventure’ (p. 110) in any age. Jacqueline Tasioulas’s ‘The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde’s Eyebrow’ corrects notions of Criseyde’s appearance, to show Troilus’s willingness to fall in love with her. [End Page 291] Charlotte Brewer’s essay, ‘Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer’, embraces both styles. She describes the making of the dictionaries, and also shows their limitations and suggests ways to use them most fruitfully. These essays present Brewer as a generous, persuasive, innovative critic, who has inspired and encouraged the contributors and many other readers. Their extensions and explorations of his contributions have produced a graceful tribute to his influence. Rosemary Greentree The University of Adelaide Copyright © 2015 Rosemary Greentree

Recovering the Beauty of Medusa

WHEN P.B. SHELLEY VISITED THE UFFIZI GALLERY IN FLORENCE IN THE fall of 1819, he was drawn there by his interest in Greek sculpture, making his encounter with an anonymous sixteenth-century oil painting of the decapitated Head of then still erroneously attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, in all probability mere accident. (1) But an almost irresistible aesthetic logic informs the imaginary scenario in which the exiled British Romantic poet makes his way, pen and notebook in hand, through the Florentine collection of Grecian marbles, only to find himself face to face with Medusa, whose petrifying glance makes her the consummate sculptor of Greek myth, reverse Pygmalion of sorts, her primordial cave sculpture hall of melancholy beauty. Whether Shelley's discovery of the painting was accidental or not, his poetic response makes clear that he thoroughly understands the petrifying mythological and representational traps surrounding the Gorgon; for if, as Grant F. Scott has pointed out, there is an undeniable parallelism between Perseus, the slayer of the Medusa, and the ekphrastic poet entering the museum, Percy Shelley clearly attempts to avoid repeating the former's violent approach and cannily resists all identification with his near-namesake. (2) Confronting the Flemish Gorgoneion (fig. 1), Shelley creates fragmentary ekphrastic shield of words that is not meant to protect against the purported deadliness of Medusa's glance, but rather aims to undo the representational and ideological structures of patriarchal power that make monster in the first place, and of which the sword-wielding Perseus is no more than an instrument. By refusing to perpetuate the violence of the possessive gaze, Shelley's On the Medusa becomes an ekphrastic poem that subverts the dominant aesthetic rules of genre playing on male desires and fears and affirming power and control over the female art object. Through the undermining of such modes of seeing in his ekphrastic verse, Shelley ultimately seeks to open up the possibility of new modes of perception, unbound by the inherently ideological structures of representation that usually inform the way we see the world. Shelley's verse enables us to realize that acts of representation, be they verbal or visual, are always instances of inextricable error, acts of power and control that produce the very objects they purport to represent. The strain of his fragmentary poem also asks us to imagine poetic mode of perception that might extricate us from such forms of petrification and, in so doing, recover the Medusa's original beauty, which is also the true power of in the Shelleyan, non-generic sense of the word. Beauty here must lose all gendered connotations, and be revealed as non-representational vision, if the fundamental bond is to be broken, by which the original object of non-possessive gaze must remain forever inaccessible and art be constrained to signal its irrevocable impotence to bring it into view. (3) In order to appreciate fully how Shelley aims to unbind both beauty and poetry and to enable different relation to the (not just female) Other in his fragmentary verse, it will first be necessary to retrace the generic structures that threaten to entrap the ekphrastic writer. (4) [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] 1. Ekphrasis W. J. T. Mitchell has argued that female otherness is overdetermined in ekphrastic texts, as the genre is mired in gendered assumptions about the relationship between the verbal and the visual--the male logos controlling and taking possession of the female image--which always gives its intermedial texts overtones ... of pornographic writing and masturbatory fantasy, and turns the verbal obsession with the ekphrastic image into a kind of mental rape that may induce sense of guilt, paralysis, or ambivalence in the observer. (5) Medusa, the once beautiful maiden, who, according to myth, was raped by Poseidon and transformed into snake-headed monster by Athena as punishment for her association with the earth-shaker, can hence be seen as an emblem of the repressed sexual violence hidden by the representational illusions of ekphrasis. …

The Ecology of British Romantic Conservatism, 1790–1837 by Katey Castellano

Katey Castellano. The Ecology of British Romantic Conservatism, 1790-1837. New York: Palgrave, 2013. Pp. ix+220. $95. In her intriguing The Ecology of British Conservatism, 1790-1837, Katey Castellano reframes the politics of Romantic proto-environmentalism, questioning what she terms largely unchallenged assumption in both Romanticism and in environmental studies ... [that] environmental awareness and advocacy is tethered to liberal progressivism and its expanding concept of individual rights (2). Building on Terrance Ball's observation that Edmund Burke argued for an intergenerational symmetry in which the living have obligations both to the dead and to the unborn, Castellano argues that the conservative notion of humans as caretakers of property and tradition represents fundamental Romantic contribution to the concept of sustainability. Playing on the shared roots of conservation and conservatism, Castellano argues that writers ranging from William Wordsworth to William Cobbett affiliated themselves with this mode of Romantic conservatism in texts that opposed universalizing scientific, political, and financial systems' erosion of place and custom. The of the book's title may mislead some readers. Castellano is primarily concerned with the social ecology of second (represented mainly by the traditional practices of agricultural communities) rather than the environmental ecologies of wilderness. (Indeed, the old Romantic keyword nature is tellingly omitted from the book's index.) Rather than analyzing scientific or imperial representations of natural ecology, Castellano instead provides an ecocritical perspective on topics usually examined in strictly human contexts: enclosure, cultural loss, and the deterioration of the estate. At times I wish she had highlighted the environmental dimensions of her argument more, for there is much that feels familiar in her discussions of literary representations of rural community collapse. Nevertheless, in connecting elegies for vanishing rural past with the environmental consequences of rupturing traditions of land use, Castellano generates some fresh readings of familiar Romantic texts. For Romantic ecocritics, her book's greatest contribution lies in its valuable observation that the intergenerational represented in depictions of rural societies under siege by modernity may also be the imagination best equipped to perceive and articulate the slow violence of environmental degradation. Castellano's political frame (established in short introduction) has its strengths and weaknesses. It is refreshing to see Edmund Burke positioned as proto-environmental writer, and the connections Castellano illustrates certainly complicate any attempts to straightforwardly equate liberal philosophy with environmental thinking. However, her very particular definition of conservative lies uneasily atop the historical developments she is describing. At times, the argument that follows begs the question of how Romantics perceived the politics--Whig, Tory, or otherwise--of the representational trends she cites. Given Castellano's emphasis on social ecology, I would have liked to learn how she sees the agricultural philosophies of Whig and Tory landed interests intersecting with her chosen texts. That said, Castellano's claims are carefully scaffolded, and her terminology offers an alternative frame for configuring Romantic authors' responses to the social and physical deterioration of rural localities. The first chapter explores the environmental ethics implied in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Castellano argues that Burke's portrayal of citizens as custodians of national inheritance intersects with contemporary tensions over proper land management. In portraying individuals as temporary possessors of land inherited from the dead, which they are responsible for transmitting intact to the future, Burke promotes a cultural commons of lived relationships between people, history, and the environment (27) that lays important groundwork for an ethos of sustainability. …

미국 초기국가시대 전환기 정원의 특성 - 파커 정원, 마운트 버논, 몬티첼로 분석을 중심으로 -

본 연구는 영국 낭만주의 정원과 구별되는 미국 낭만주의 정원의 특성을 밝히기 위한 초기 연구로, 미국 초기 국가시대 영국의 낭만주의 정원이 처음 도입되기 시작하여 전환기 정원으로 언급되고 있는 파커정원, 마운트 버논과 몬티첼로 정원을 분석하였다. 분석은 문헌을 통해 시대적 배경, 정원을 조성한 인물, 정형식 정원과 자연주의 정원의 특성 등을 조사하였고, 문헌고찰과 현장답사를 통해 수집된 자료를 중심으로 각 대상지의 공간구조 원리와 정원요소를 중심으로 분석하였다. 공간구조 원리는 직선과 곡선, 노단과 구릉, 가시적 축과 비가시적 축, 대칭과 비대칭, 원근법과 사원근법을 분석인자로 하였다. 분석결과 각 정원은 초기국가 전시대인 식민지 시대 정원에서 보여지는 정형식 정원과 달리 자연주의 정원 즉, 비정형식 정원(영국 자연주의 정원) 양식이 공존하였다. 즉, 파카정원은 정형식 정원과 자연주의 정원이 각각의 공간에 계획되어 각각의 공간에 양식적 특성이 잘 나타나고 있었으나 정형식 정원에서 중심축의 계획에 있어서 거주지의 축과 정원의 축이 일치하지 않아 기존의 정형식 정원의 틀에서 벗어났음을 알 수 있었다. 이러한 현상과 한 정원 내에 자연주의적 정원이 공존 한다는 사실은 미국 초기 국가시대에 계획되어졌던 정형식 정원 양식이 다른 양식으로 대체된 것을 입증한다. 마운트 버논 정원은 파커정원에서와 같이 각각 다른 공간으로 나뉘어 계획된 것이 아니라 하나의 정원에 두 가지 양식이 서로 조화롭게 혼합되어 계획되어졌다. 구불구불한 산책로가 도입되었으나 중심축에 의한 좌우 대칭을 이루게 하였으며, 동일한 식재를 통해 대칭 등 정형적 계획이 동시에 고려된 것으로 나타났다. 반면 구릉의 테라스, 사원근법을 통한 공간계획 등을 통해 본격적으로 자연주의적 양식이 미국 정원에 정착하고 있음을 알 수 있었다. 몬티첼로의 분석결과 자연주의 정원의 대표적 특성인 구불구불한 산책로, 장식농장, 곡선의 화단과 사원근법 등의 원리로 공간이 계획되어 졌으며, 곡선의 화단, 숲과 덤불 형태의 식재 등 정형식 정원의 모습은 거의 찾아 볼 수 없는 영국에서 도입된 자연주의 정원의 특성이 완벽하게 재현된 것을 알 수 있었다. This study is the first stage to identify distinctive characteristics of American Romantic Garden compared to English Romantic Garden. The purpose of the study is to identify characteristics of transitional garden in the early period of America by analyzing of Paca garden, Mount Vernon and Monticello when English Naturalistic Garden was firstly imported. The analysis studied historical background, people who designed garden, formal garden and characteristics of natural garden through reference. Also based on data through reference and field research, spatial configuration and garden factors of each site were analyzed. In spatial configuration, straight line and curve line, formal terrace and natural slope, visible axis and invisible axis, symetric and asymmetric, and perspective and oblique perspectives were used as analyzing factors. As a result of analysis, each garden showed different type from that of formal gardens from colony period, which is natural garden of asymmetric garden(English natural garden) coexisted. Paca garden which planned formal garden and natural garden in each space showed characteristics of each space, but in formal garden residential axis and garden axis does not coincide which shows it is out of formal garden type. Such phenomena and the fact that naturalistic garden coexist in the same garden shows that the formal garden type from early days in US is starting to change in different types. Mount Vernon garden, similar to Paca garden, was designed to have two different types of gardens in harmony rather than divide the space into different space and design it. It adapted serpent walkway but shows symmetric by central axis and considered formalistic plan through same materials. However through terrace in hills and spatial plan of oblique perspective, one could observe that naturalistic type was beginning to settle in US gardens. Through Monticello analysis, space was designed with major characteristics of naturalistic garden which is serpent walkway, ornamental farm, winding flower bed grove and bush and oblique perspective, and it completely duplicates characteristics of naturalistic garden which could not be found in gardens imported from UK.

“The broken schippus he ther fonde”: Shipwrecks and the Human Costs of Investment Capital in Middle English Romance

Featuring prominently in the romance imagination as terrifying obstacles in the hero’s path, shipwrecks are nevertheless often presented from the salvager’s perspective. Romances abound with knights, clerks, and merchants who obsessively observe nearby beaches and cautiously (yet excitedly) examine the contents of wrecked vessels. Washed ashore, such fruits of maritime disaster delineate medieval English conceptions of seashores as dangerous yet profitable spaces, wherein seaside harvests of (un)natural resources help to stimulate local economic networks. Designations of these shipwrecks as “magical” or “fortuitous” cannot, however, completely elide the source of such wealth in others’ suffering—an unavoidable implication that interrogates contemporary means of attaining investment capital. As such, this paper examines how the littoral space of the seashore is cast as a source of perilous and problematic material bounty in many Middle English romances.

Kensuke Morimatsu, British Romantics and Their "Green" Poetry: From Goldsmith to Keats, Tokyo: Chuo University Press, 2013, viii+413pp.

Kensuke Morimatsu, British Romantics and Their "Green" Poetry: From Goldsmith to Keats, Tokyo: Chuo University Press, 2013, viii+413pp.

Nicholas Mason. Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism.

Nicholas Mason. Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism.

‘For you are a man and she is a maid’: Performing masculinity in Orientalist medieval and modern popular romance fiction

Abstract Dominant, virile, brooding: the alpha male is quintessential in modern western popular romance published by companies such as Harlequin Mills & Boon. One persistent iteration of the alpha is the Middle Eastern sheikh, whose hypermasculinity seems initially at odds with the ‘feminine penetrability’ of the Oriental east with which he is connected. Yet, the modern sheikh romance was not the first genre to persistently represent eastern romantic heroes; in late medieval England, the most popular secular texts were romances, several of which contained Orientalist heroes. This article scrutinizes the masculine performance of the sheikh hero in light of the romance genre’s medieval history. I consider how the masculinities of modern and medieval eastern romance heroes are inextricably connected to their eastern surroundings. Focusing on the Middle English romance Floris and Blancheflour, I identify two contrasting models of eastern hypo- and hyper-masculinity that make overt deviant gender performance and the associated anxiety and effect on heterosexual gender relations. Finally, I re-examine the presentation of the hypermasculine sheikh hero, arguing that these romances too exhibit anxiety about male gender identity in the east. These romances, medieval and modern, thus acknowledge and deny Said’s effeminate Orient and its destabilizing potential.

Performance and the Middle English Romance

Performance and the Middle English Romance

Layamon’s Brut Between Old English Heroic Poetry and Middle English Romance: A Study of the Lexical Fields ‘Hero’, ‘Warrior’ and ‘Knight’

Book Review| October 01 2014 Layamon’s Brut Between Old English Heroic Poetry and Middle English Romance: A Study of the Lexical Fields ‘Hero’, ‘Warrior’ and ‘Knight’ Layamon’s Brut Between Old English Heroic Poetry and Middle English Romance: A Study of the Lexical Fields ‘Hero’, ‘Warrior’ and ‘Knight’. By Christine Elsweiler. Münchener Universitätsschriften, 35. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. Pp. xx + 470; 5 tables. $115.95. R. S. Allen R. S. Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Journal of English and Germanic Philology (2014) 113 (4): 529–532. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.113.4.0529 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation R. S. Allen; Layamon’s Brut Between Old English Heroic Poetry and Middle English Romance: A Study of the Lexical Fields ‘Hero’, ‘Warrior’ and ‘Knight’. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1 October 2014; 113 (4): 529–532. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.113.4.0529 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressThe Journal of English and Germanic Philology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Numerological and Structural Symbolism in the Auchinleck Stanzaic Guy of Warwick

Although numerical symbolism has been recognized as a rich and sophisticated poetic system in the “high” literature of the middle ages, such as Pearl and The Divine Comedy, its use in the Middle English romances is usually misrecognized as evincing formulaic or sub-standard writing. Yet numbers are used in the romances to subtly underscore or evoke deeper meanings, typically binary twos, triplets or other philosophically or theologically meaningful numbers such as five, seven, fifteen or forty. The Auchinleck Stanzaic Guy of Warwick (c. 1330) emphasizes the number three in its tripartite battle sequence and manuscript formatting, and equally uses seven and fifteen as a leitmotif to underscore significant events of trial or joy. Although Guy is meant to suggest the pattern of Christ and not serve as a literary representation, such number patterns are not random or metrical tags but thematically reinforce the poem's homiletic aims.

“Tulips on Dunghills”: Regendering the Georgic in Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh

Of the mutual admiration she shares with her brother Edward, referred to as Elizabeth Barrett Browning claims, Our minds our souls are united by the same opinions, the same interests! ... If there be any tie stronger than these, know not of it!; later in the same essay she writes, Let those who have perused together the Roman & Greek Classics, and who have together resisted difficulties of style & language decide whether or not our attachment be founded on folly--! (1) And yet despite her claim to their identical interests and opinion, we learn that their devotion was at the same time in many ways kept alive by a tension founded in their differences. Elizabeth again: I am not content till excel; but Bro is satisfied with mediocrity--! ... My imagination is perhaps exalted & glowing than my dear Bro's but in judgement he infinitely surpasses me! His abilities are more solid & profound, hers more refined & dazzling; she prefers literature Poetry Metaphysics & fanciful philosophy, he, the sober reasoning of the Historian (Correspondence, 1:357). As will suggest, the interplay between these factors--including their differences of character as reflected in her reading of the Classics--serves as touchstone for my reading of Barrett Browning's poem Aurora Leigh, particularly as it is nuanced by her sense of genre and of gender. This convergence of factors is developed in her letter to Hugh Stuart Boyd, one of Barrett Browning's great intellectual companions, where she confesses her failure to appreciate Virgil (I have tried hard to like olives & the Aeneid upon principle--and could succeed on neither point) in contrast to her love of Homer (Critics who think it necessary to compare Virgil & Homer [they may as well compare the with the mountain!) after delivering up the praise of judgement to are graciously pleased to leave the fire with Homer). (2) Virgil is the mouse here, Homer the mountain; Virgil judgement, Homer fire. Virgil's character traits here she attributes to Bro, and likewise Homer's to herself. As such, Bro, reflecting the Roman, is rational, reflective, moderate, and judicious, while she, the Greek, is imaginative, inspired, enthusiastic, and ardent. Elsewhere in her essay, On Ancient and Modern Literature, the contrast is hyperbolized between the plagiarist Virgil, and the sublime conceptions of Homer the father of the lyre. (3) Browning, claim, invokes these distinctions in Aurora Leigh in order for Aurora to cultivate her own aesthetic, drawing from each perspective and regendering both as feminine. so doing, she appropriates Virgil's georgic, infuses it with the ardent enthusiasm of her Homer, and uses it, finally, to critique Romney's Virgil. As such, she challenges masculinist Greek and Roman views of history and offers instead a history inspired by her own vision, one anticipating Kevis Goodman's recently developed sense of modernity in Georgic Modernity and British Romanticism. (4) Echoing the Virgilian georgic themes in her poem, she transforms conventional georgic roots in agricultural labor to include both tending the soil and also tending social ills, human relationships, and words themselves. While still young and living with her English aunt, Aurora the aspiring poet famously decides to crown herself with some headlong ivy, rationalizing that she may In sport, not pride ... learn the feel of it, / Before my brows be numb as Dante's own. (5) She is interrupted by her cousin Romney who reminds her that women Scarce need be poets, and warns her to Keep to the green wreath, / Since even dreaming of the stone and bronze / Brings headaches, pretty cousin, and defiles / The clean white morning dresses (2.93, 93-96). Her response: I perceive / The headache is too noble for my sex. / You think the heartache would sound decenter, / Since that's the woman's special, proper ache (2. …

Fathers and Daughters in the English romance in the later middle ages

Fathers and Daughters in the English romance in the later middle ages

Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism by Nicholas Mason (review)

Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism by Nicholas Mason (review)

Perfect and Imperfect Rhyme: Romances in the abab Tradition

This article focuses on a group of Middle English romances composed in four-line stanzas rhyming abab . Surviving examples of this form include Thomas of Erceldoune, The Sowdone of Babylon, The Knight of Courtesy , and the fragmentary Partonope of Blois . Since these romances are from different dialect areas, the verse form appears to have been a popular one in medieval England. Examining the quality of the rhymes in the extant manuscripts, we show that both the original poets and the scribes of these romances were happy to tolerate imperfect rhyme. Two common types of imperfect rhyme, “feature rhyme” and “subsequence rhyme,” are discussed, and we provide analogues for such rhymes in medieval and modern song, from nursery rhymes to Latin hymns. We conclude by suggesting that the use of so-called “imperfect” rhyme is linked with oral performance and that it was in fact perfectly acceptable in this context.

Romancing the City: Margery Kempe in Rome

Margery Kempe’s experiences in Rome mimic not only those of female saints but also those of Middle English romance heroines, including Constance and Emaré. The geography and social disorganization of early fifteenth-century Rome contribute to this reading of Kempe as a romance heroine alone in an environment of scarcity, chance, and miraculous events.

Indios by Linda Hogan (review)

Reviewed by: Indios by Linda Hogan Sravani Biswas Linda Hogan. Indios. San Antonio, Texas: Wings Press, 2012. 62p. Linda Hogan is a Native American poet. She is also a master story-teller, playwright, novelist and an environmentalist. Her book Indios is an expression of all these traits compressed together, which gives the reader a novel experience. Is it a long dramatic monologue, written in blank verse? Is it a novella with such meaningful gaps that the reader becomes the author, and through imagination is able to create for herself the long painful story of the indigenous tribes of America? Or is it the voice of the environmentalist who, with a deep urgency, appeals to the ‘civilized’ colonizer not to destroy nature and the indigenous knowledge system of a tribe that had, till then, taken care of both man and nature? Hogan dedicates her book to all aboriginal women who, she is sure, know the story of the captive woman accused of killing her children. This story resonates with the echo of the Greek mythological story of Medea as told by Euripides. Yet it is Hogan’s own individual creation because she has successfully distilled an old local story through the famous Medea myth, and thus has made its appeal universal. She does not stop here. Rather, she subverts the story of Euripides and saves Medea and the captivated aboriginal woman from a false stigma. Indios is a dramatic monologue – the stage being the prison cell and the prisoner speaking to a journalist named Clare Finley. The style is as successful as that of Browning, but while Browning stuck to the English Romantic twilight of [End Page 229] the Victorian era, Hogan’s voice echoes round the world wherever colonization has affected and almost erased the identities of the indigenous inhabitants. She successfully includes the interviewer’s reaction in the story of Indios in an indirect manner. When Indios says – “Life hasn’t hardened me here” (3) the reader imagines the face of the interviewer awestruck by the still lingering beauty of the prisoner. Like Medea, Indios too is an exceptional woman. She would not plead for innocence. She has indeed committed murder, but she has not killed her children. At this point we hear the voice of Indios subverting the famous Medea myth retold by Euripides, which of course is patriarchal in tone. In Euripides, Medea is the enchantress who kills her children. The story of Indios also reverberates with other local myths like that of a legendary Hispanic beauty who marries a ranchero and kills her own children, or the myth of Pocahontas, the Virginia Indian who saved and married a captive named John Smith and then converted to Christianity. Levis Strauss showed how myths of different countries are enjoined by expressing the elementary structures of the human mind. All the above mentioned myths reveal woman as the betrayer who leaves her own people to marry an outsider. She falls outside the category of the normal, for she is an enchantress and even capable of killing her own children or refusing to return to her own tribe. When the symbolic discourse of a myth turns to rational discourse in the form of written words, its dynamism is marred by the hegemonic ideology of the society of which the writer is a member. In the western patriarchal paradigm, it is the story of the deviant woman. But Hogan’s writing subverts this tendency and shows how, in all these myths, the women are destroyed because of their love for their husbands and their children. Indios is a tragedy turned inside out. It is the strong and tragic woman’s voice that holds center stage, a reversal of her role in world famous tragedies where women remain as shadows to the male counterparts dramatizing their fall. Hogan’s use of myth helps her transcend the single voice. The single voice of Indios merges with all the voices of Native Americans, especially the women. As the colonizer is attracted to the gold mines, she too is innocently attracted to the ‘golden man,’ i.e. the white skinned male. This is her flaw. To the colonizer she is exotic, but at the same...

David Simpson Romanticism and the Question of the StrangerRomanticism and the Question of the Stranger. David Simpson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. x+271.

David Simpson Romanticism and the Question of the StrangerRomanticism and the Question of the Stranger. David Simpson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. x+271.

The Roots of Romantic Cognitivism: (Post) Kantian Intellectual Intuition and the Unity of Creation and Discovery

During the romantic period, various authors expressed the belief that through creativity, we can directly access truth. To modern ears, this claim sounds strange. In this paper, I attempt to render the position comprehensible, and to show how it came to seem plausible to the romantics. I begin by offering examples of this position as found in the work of the British romantics. Each thinks that the deepest knowledge can only be gained by an act of creativity. I suggest the belief should be seen in the context of the post-Kantian embrace of “intellectual intuition.” Unresolved tensions in Kant's philosophy had encouraged a belief that creation and discovery were not distinct categories. The post-Kantians held that in certain cases of knowledge (for Fichte, knowledge of self and world; for Schelling, knowledge of the Absolute) the distinction between discovering a truth and creating that truth dissolves. In this context, the cognitive role assigned to acts of creativity is not without its own appeal.