Romantic Poetry Research Articles

Levého máchovské studie a nový anglický překlad „Máje“

This paper deals with “May”, an 1836 poetic masterpiece by the Czech Romantic poet, Karel Hynek Macha (1810–1836). First, it briefly recounts the findings of Jiři Levy (1950) and Stanislav Rubaš (2012) concerned with “May” in its renderings into English. Having analysed various English versions of Macha’s poem, both translation scholars reveal how the poetic potential, or muse, of the respective translators have been moulded by their target language cultures, especially in terms of the florid excess of Victorian poetry and of Romantic fatalism, the stock-intrade of Romantic poetry, coined by George Gordon Byron. Second, the paper examines a new (so far unpublished) English translation of “May” by UIC Professor Alfred Thomas. Juxtaposing some of the main passages of the original (mostly from Canto 1) with their new English version, the author reveals a number of metrical and semantic shifts, shortcomings as well as obvious mistakes. Third, for the sake of contrast and comparison, the present article shows how a 1932 translation of “May” made by Roderick A. Ginsburg excels over the new rendering both in accuracy and poetic qualities.

FROM PRIAPUS TO CYTHEREA: A SEQUENTIAL READING OF THECATALEPTON

In an article published thirteen years ago, I tried to break new ground by showing that the texts transmitted under the titleCataleptonas the work of Virgil can be seen to form an elaborately arranged and highly allusive book of verse written by a single author. This latter, I argued, was identical with the anonymous poet who, in an epilogue, represents the preceding poems as the juvenilia of the author later known for hisBucolics,GeorgicsandAeneidand, consequently, is himself speaking in the alleged early works asVirgil impersonator. This anonymous poet, however, cannot rightly be labelled a literary forger, since he repeatedly and quite unmistakably recalls each of Virgil's threeoperaas well as other texts written after the year 19b.c. Evidently, then, he is inviting his readers to take part in a literarylusus, one in which they are expected to be familiar not only with the texts ofBucolics,GeorgicsandAeneidbut also with the life of the man who wrote them. The fiction of a young Virgil is created, one who wrote his first poems—the verses referred to in the epilogue aselementaandrudis Calliope(Catal.18[15])—primarily under the influence of Catullus, the said poems being, with the exception ofCatal.12(9) and 16(13), epigrams. My interpretation has borne fruit, with Irene Peirano and Markus Stachon each devoting, in 2012 and 2014 respectively, a monograph to this approach and offering what are often very thorough analytical readings of the poems as the creations of aVirgil impersonator. However, neither of these two Latinists has considered one particular interpretative aspect, which I myself had only been able to introduce very briefly into my paper: the recognition that, as many more recent studies have now further corroborated, Roman poetry books were designed for linear, sequential reading, that they have, as it were, a story to tell. Peirano, moreover, disregards in her study the threePriapeapositioned in editions before the other fifteen epigrams and shown there with their own separate numbering. In the manuscripts, however, the titleCataleptonrefers without exception to a unit comprising the threePriapeaand the fifteen epigrams. The titlePriapea, found in the catalogue of the Murbach manuscripts and in some codices (for example the Graz fragment), is always attached solely to the poemQuid hoc noui est?In theVita Suetoniana-Donatiana(VSD), the termsCatalepton,PriapeaandEpigrammatawere evidently used as three different titles; the author (or his source) may not have seen thatCataleptonis the title of all the poems. Furthermore, I should like to point out that, counted together, ‘Virgil's’Priapeaand epigrams come to a total of seventeen poems and so match precisely both the total of seventeen books in the real Virgil's three works and the total number of Horace's epodes, of the poems, that is, which the not-so-real Virgil quite conspicuously evokes in his own penultimate poem (Catal.16[13]). More significantly, however, a sequential reading of thePriapea et Epigrammatacan in fact build a watertight case for taking the texts to be, as it were, a composite whole, and that is what I intend to argue in the rest of the article.

Tim Fulford, Romantic Poetry and Literary Coteries: The Dialect of the Tribe

<scp>Tim Fulford</scp>, <i>Romantic Poetry and Literary Coteries: The Dialect of the Tribe</i>

Reading and Resituating Charles Sangster’s The St. Lawrence and the Saguenay as a Canadian Pilgrimage Poem

Developing on 150 years of reviews and scholarship of Charles Sangster’s The St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, this paper contends that Sangster’s poem is not merely derivative of British and American Romantic poetry, or a vague tourist poem, but that Sangster employs the language and images of Christian pilgrimage to purposefully detail the pilgrimage of his soul.

Romanticism, Self-Canonization, and the Business of Poetry. Michael Gamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. vii+307.

<i>Romanticism, Self-Canonization, and the Business of Poetry</i>. Michael Gamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. vii+307.

Victorian Studies in the Anthropocene: An Interview with Claire Colebrook

In this interview, Claire Colebrook discusses the implications of the Anthropocene for Victorian literature — and, by extension, for the field of Victorian studies — as well as literary history and critical theory more broadly. A literary scholar by training, with a focus on Romanticism, Colebrook is now a leading figure in Anthropocene studies, and her work in this field examines how climate change forces us to reassess the modes of thinking upon which we have come to rely in the humanities. In this provocative discussion, Colebrook addresses the ways in which the Anthropocene might be traced back through Romantic and Victorian poetry, the emergence of post-apocalyptic narratives in the nineteenth century, the challenges posed to feminism by planetary destruction, and the humanities’ complicity with ecological degradation.

ЭЛЕГИЯ «ОЗЕРО» А. ДЕ ЛАМАРТИНА КАК ВОПЛОЩЕНИЕ «НОВОГО ЛИРИЗМА»

The article provides a brief description of A. de Lamartine’s lyricism as it is interpreted by the poet and analyzes the famous elegy “The Lake” as an example of implementing French romantic’s poetological principles. The paper also tackles the problem, which became relevant in the European romantic poetry - the limits of individual talent’s potentials. The author claims that the poet’s creative work is determined by the specificity of his own lyricism; it explains the monotony (according to critics and readers) of Lamartine’s poetry based on the conflict of ideal feeling and realized impossibility of its ideal existence.

Introduction: Edgy Romanticism

This introduction provides a rationalisation for a special issue of Romanticism on edges, boundaries, and borders. The Romantic period and Romantic studies have both been fascinated by the marginal, the exile, and the outsider. ‘Edgy Romanticism’, inspired by a conference held in April 2016 at Edge Hill University, looks again at these figures, but we are also interested in new work that is being done at the edges of the discipline, thinking about new methodologies and themes as constituting the borders and boundaries of Romanticism as such. So, our collection of articles begins and ends with new ways to conceptualise Romantic understandings of history, continuing with novel approaches to place, canonical Romantic poetry, and women's writing. The introduction concludes with a consideration of the effect the digital turn in the humanities will have on Romantic studies.

Two or III Feet Apart: Oral Recitation, Roman Numerals, and Metrical Regularity in Capystranus

The Middle English verse romance, Capystranus, contains 32 numerical expressions in fewer than 580 lines, some of which are spelled out, others are in Roman numerals, while the rest are in mixed orthographical/numerical forms. Values range between one and 100,000 and contain up to four individual lexemes requiring as many as six syllables to be expressed orally. Although it was initially suspected that such complex expression might be silently “skipped over”, the verse shows that the poem’s metrical regularity is dependent upon full vocal/acoustic realization of all numbers expressed in Roman notation. While this does not preclude silent reading, it does at least suggest the text was suitable for oral recitation. This paper shows how even complex Roman numerals were either suitable or suitably adapted for quick and easy interpretation. Propositions are provided concerning the choice of orthographical representation or Roman notation and its treatment. In this romance it seems that line length was less important than a number’s position in a line, as well as the ease with which a number could be “subitized” or mentally visualized and approximated, resulting in high frequency, low-value numbers usually being realized as lexical items to be written out, while high-value numbers conceived of more abstractly would be represented symbolically. The exceptions seem to be certain high frequency numbers of account (e.g., 20, 100, 1000), which could be provided orthographically or numerically despite difficulty subitizing them, while common low-value numbers in time expressions could be expressed numerically as they would appear on time pieces.

THE BED CANOPY IN XENOPHON OF EPHESUS AND THE ICONOGRAPHY OF MARS AND VENUS UNDER THE EMPIRE

This paper discusses how Roman visual culture might be useful for deciphering the ecphrastic passages of the ancient Greek novel. Whereasecphrasishas been one of the blossoming topics in the field, the examination of novelisticecphrasisalongside particular works of art is still a desideratum. As a test case I will use Xenophon of Ephesus’ecphrasisof the bed canopy depicting Ares’ and Aphrodite's embrace, in theEphesiaca,a novel that might have been written as early as AD 65. In what follows I will argue that the scene described on the canopy would have stimulated a variety of intertexts, both literary and visual, in the minds of the imperial audience: that is, Xenophon's reader would have been encouraged to recall not just Demodocus’ song of the love of Ares and Aphrodite but also the idealised Roman version of the myth, which was so frequently depicted on frescoes and mosaics in Roman villas in the first century. I then explore Xenophon's ‘interpretatio Romana’through the adaptations of the Ares and Aphrodite myth found in Plutarch and Lucian.

Virgo to Virago: Medea in the Silver Age

Virgo to Virago: Medea in the Silver Age

Aesthetics and Violence in Romantic Poetry

Violence, as exhibited by some romantic poets, works as the dormant, and sometimes explicit, whim to think of and go for. Violence may not only be a temporal tendency but rather a philosophical trend embraced by romantics so that they can offset deep frustration generated by failure to create a better world. Shelley, Blake and Lord Byron do not mind conveying a tendency to go violent in order to bring about a better world, while E.A. Poe gives abnormal images, to define man’s need to liberate himself from restrictions of time and place. Emotions, imaginations and the search for beauty that are, sometimes, seen embodied in their approach to liberty mark the touchstone that romantics felt attached to, which explains why the world needs a hero, a savior, the concept that romantics believed in.This paper sets to investigate this issue of violence, its nature and how it functions in the works of selected romantic men of letters and how it can be affiliated to beauty and ethical and aesthetical values. Edgar Allan Poe will be dealt with along with fellow English romantic figures for, next to his romantic philosophy, he had a prominent tendency for functional violence coupled with aesthetical values.

W poszukiwaniu błękitnego kwiatu, czyli o romantycznym ideale Bildung w Henryku von Ofterdingen Novalisa

The main aim of the paper is reconstruction of the concept of Bildung (considered as forming the man’s personality) in an educational novel entitled Henry von Ofterdingen written by Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). Novalis’s novel – inspired by Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister Lehrejahre – is one of the most original early romantic works which prove the importance of the idea of Bildung for German culture at the beginning of the 19th century. In the first part of the text the author discusses the literary image of Bildung presented in the plot of the novel and then indicates its inner contradiction. In the second part of the article the author reconstructs the philosophical roots of this ideal regarding Novalis’s notion of Bildung in light of the thought of German idealism (transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte in particular) because the theory of romantic progressive poetry (elaborated most fully by Friedrich Schlegel) originates there. The perspective taken in the paper allows the author to reveal the universal significance of the inner contradiction of the romantic idea of forming man’s personality as a sign of the fundamental crisis of the modern ideal of humanity.

SCEPTICISM AT THE BIRTH OF SATIRE: CARNEADES IN LUCILIUS’CONCILIVM DEORVM

The best-known fact about the interaction of the Republican Roman poet Gaius Lucilius (c.180–103/102b.c.e.), the inventor of the genre of Roman verse satire, with the doctrine of Scepticism is probably a statement of Cicero: that Clitomachus the Academician dedicated a treatise to the poet (Cic.Luc. 102). Diogenes Laertius makes much of that writer's, Clitomachus’, industry (τὸ φιλόπονον, 4.67), with the comment: ‘to such lengths did his diligence (ἐπιμελείας) go that he composed more than four hundred treatises’. This phraseology surely reminds those interested in Lucilius’ influence on later Latin poetry of Horace's disparaging comment,in hora saepe ducentos, | ut magnum, uersus dictabat(‘as a bravura display, he would often dictate two hundred verses in an hour’,Sat.1.4.9–10); moreover, Horace shortly afterwards calls his predecessorgarrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem(‘talkative and too lazy to bear the work of writing’, 1.4.12). Yet, a sceptical view of Horace's critique might have to think of Lucilius as hard-working, like his putative friend the Academic philosopher, Clitomachus.

“Our flame, the will-o’-the-wisp that dances in a few eyes, is soon to be blown out and all will fade” – Modern Literary Nostalgia as Death Mood

This article argues that there is a difference between nostalgic emotion and nostalgic mood and that the latter one often is a result of nostalgia’s inevitable link to death, entropy and teleology. It examines how nostalgic tropes, such as ruins, childhood, youth, astronomical representations, and subjective time (duration), inherited from the romantic poetry function as, and create, nostalgic death moods and retardations of eschatology in modernist fiction.

Napoleon and British Song, 1797–1822, by Oskar Cox Jensen

In this lively and engaging study, Oskar Cox Jensen surveys and analyses a neglected corpus of approximately 400 songs that circulated in England before, during and after the Napoleonic Wars. These songs, according to the author, have been seriously neglected by scholars, particularly but not only in their musical dimensions. This is a book about the experience of singing and, fittingly, it is accompanied by sixty-two recordings, easily accessible online. These were made, with heroic stamina, by the author’s sister and fellow historian, Freyja Cox Jensen, during a three-day period in September 2015. All in all, this is an exciting resource and it deserves to be widely read and heard. The author’s understanding of song is sophisticated and well informed. He avoids any simple association of ‘popular song’ with the lower orders in society, describing it instead as ‘a heterodox amalgam of Elizabethan balladry and the latest light-operatic hits, of elite patriotic effusions and obscene gutter cant, of provincial beggars’ improvisations and Romantic poetry’. Songs, he argues, should not be treated by scholars as merely illustrative of other trends, nor as static and exclusively textual. Instead, songs were ‘active objects’ that both constructed and contested socio-political identities and opinions. Song was thus ‘a cultural space in which politics of all kinds was done’. Cox Jensen also introduces the concept of ‘fitness’, a term that denotes the capacity of an individual song to exert a significant influence in its own age by combining elements such as a strong tune, a workable fit between melody and lyrics, and an awareness of existing audience tastes and sensibilities. The concept is designed partly to avoid the imposition of modern aesthetic standards, though at times there is more than a suspicion that these continue to play a role. Nevertheless, the attempt to focus in this analysis of songs on ‘how well they functioned’ on the streets and in the public houses of early nineteenth-century England is commendable.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s “Minstrel Annals” and the Romantic Literature Classroom

This essay argues that teaching Landon’s poems in the context of their original volume publication allows for greater understanding of the ways in which all Romantic-era poets deploy multiple voices in their collected works. It focuses upon strategies for teaching Landon’s Venetian Bracelet (1829) but offers a model for student engagement with Romantic poetry more generally.

A Comparative Reading of Oriental and Western Romantic Poetry - Focusing on the Chinese Poet LiBai and the English Poet William Wordsworth

A Comparative Reading of Oriental and Western Romantic Poetry - Focusing on the Chinese Poet LiBai and the English Poet William Wordsworth

Image Schemas in Romantic Poetry

Image Schemas in Romantic Poetry

Onomatopoeia, Interiority, and Incorporation

Onomatopoeia, Interiority, and Incorporation1 Matthew Rowlinson (bio) 1 A largely unnoticed volume published in 1832 appears to have TV been the first work on birds to include nonce-transcriptions of their calls as an aid to identification. This adaptation of an ancient poetic technique for the purposes of natural history and pedagogy remains familiar today in birders’ field guides and in stories and verse for children.2 As well as seeing the first syllabic representation of birdsong in a work of natural history, the first half of the nineteenth century was also the period when teaching animal sounds became a function of children’s literature.3 The 1832 volume was titled The Minstrelsy of the Woods, or Sketches and Songs Connected with the Natural History of . . . British and Foreign Birds; it combines [End Page 429] the two genres, since it is explicitly addressed to young readers, both in its dedication to the anonymous author’s “beloved young relatives” and in the introductory poem “To my Brother’s Children.” The book’s introduction states its debt to Thomas Bewick’s History of British Birds (1797–1804) and to Georges Cuvier’s The Animal Kingdom (published 1807 as Le Règne Animal). Cuvier and Bewick are indeed major sources for the Minstrelsy’s descriptions of birds’ appearance and habit; it also draws from them fundamental principles of organization. The basic object of study in the Minstrelsy, as in Bewick and Cuvier, is the species, and the work’s aim is to teach its readers to identify the species of birds they encounter in the wild. Its organization is thus modeled on that which Bewick made standard for field guides to this day, with the work being divided into sections grouping birds by families, and within these sections a chapter devoted to each species. To the taxonomic markers of habit, plumage, and so forth that it adopts from Bewick and Cuvier, the Minstrelsy adds phonetic transcriptions of birdcalls. In some cases these transcriptions are traditional, as when the cry of the tawny owl is described as “well imitated by the syllables tee-whit or too-whit, and the hollow shuddering kind of note too-whoo.”4 The book’s title points two ways; as well as a handbook on identifying birds by their song, it is also a miscellany of poetry about birds. While it includes long passages from other poets including James Thomson and Charlotte Smith, much of the Minstrelsy’s poetry is original. Each of the birds it treats has a poem dedicated to it, in many of which the birds speak for themselves, with the syllabic transcription of their songs making a refrain. Thus, “The Song of the Wood-Grouse”: You must look for meOn my mountain tree,Where the hardy pine uncultured grows,Where the foaming torrent wildly flows,There look for me,On my mountain tree,With my clarion note he-de-he-de-he.5 There may be earlier texts to use phonetic transcriptions of birdcalls as species markers, though I have not found any; I suggest in any case that in its assumption that animals of a given species always say the same thing, and its setting of their utterance in verse, Minstrelsy is an artifact of its historical moment. [End Page 430] 2 We know the poetic technique employed by the Minstrelsy as onomatopoeia, and this essay will consider two different kinds of animal onomatopoeia in Romantic poetry. In the examples to be discussed, I will argue that onomatopoeia is treated as a poetic error, incorporating animal utterance in the poem only to reject it, or to make the animal itself an object of sacrifice. Onomatopoeia’s foundational theorist was Quintilian, in whose late first century Institutio Oratoria the term refers—as its etymology implies—to any new creation of a word. The examples Quintilian gives, however, are all of what would be termed onomatopoeias in our time, words coined to refer to a sound while also mimicking it: they are “mugitus, lowing, sibilus, a hiss, and murmur.”6 For the Elizabethan rhetorician George Puttenham, onomatopoeia is “the New namer”;7 Puttenham is explicit that the newly-minted word should be “consonant” to...