Byron, Hunt, and the Politics of Literary Engagement

Byron, Hunt, and the Politics of Literary Engagement
Author: Michael Steier
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2019-07-03
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1000084795

In the second decade of the nineteenth century, the British press began a campaign of critical abuse against Leigh Hunt, caricaturing the radical journalist as an upstart "Cockney" author whose literary talents were as disreputable as his politics. Lord Byron, on the other hand, was revered as a peer and a poetical genius who, the conservative press argued, would never befriend and collaborate with a writer like Hunt. Yet Byron did just that. Byron, Hunt, and the Politics of Literary Engagement is the first full-length study of the friendship and literary relationship of two of the most important second-generation Romantic authors. Challenging long-held critical attitudes, this study shows that Byron and Hunt engaged in a creative and meaningful dialogue at each major stage in their careers, from their earliest published volumes of juvenile poetry and verse satire to their most celebrated contributions to Romantic literature: The Story of Rimini and Don Juan. Drawing upon newly recovered letters and unpublished manuscript material, this book illuminates the surprisingly durable and artistically significant friendship of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt.

The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron

The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 785
Release: 2024-10-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192536346

The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron offers the latest in critical thinking about the poet that defined the Romantic era across Europe and beyond. The volume presents forty-four groundbreaking essays that enable readers to assess Lord Byron's central position in Romantic traditions and his profound and far-reaching influence on British, European, and world culture. The chapters are organized into five sections-'Works', 'Biographical Contexts', 'Literary and Cultural Contexts', 'Afterlives', and 'Reading Byron Now'-that guide readers through the most important issues and frameworks for interpreting Byron. 'Works' presents original readings of Byron's key works and many of his lesser-known ones, giving space to extensive studies of his great epic, Don Juan, and the poem that brought him fame, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 'Biographical Contexts' invites readers to consider Byron's life through key themes and patterns. 'Literary and Cultural Contexts' sets out the most important intellectual traditions from which Byron's work emerged and in which it developed. 'Afterlives' shows readers the extent of Byron's influence on literature, art, music, and politics in Europe and beyond. 'Reading Byron Now' advances the critical agendas that are shaping Byron Studies today. The Handbook tackles key themes associated with Byron including the Byronic Hero, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, sexuality, mobility, scepticism, the Gothic, celebrity culture, and much more. For new readers of Byron, the volume provides an excellent grounding in his life and work, and for specialists, it opens up exciting new approaches to an icon of Romantic literature.

Leigh Hunt and the London Literary Scene

Leigh Hunt and the London Literary Scene
Author: Michael Eberle-Sinatra
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1134373562

Leigh Hunt’s contributions to English literature, although downplayed for several decades, are now acknowledged by scholars as key to our understanding of the Romantic period. He was not only a facilitator - in his support for the poetry of Shelley and Keats for example - but was also a major contributor in his own right to the literary and political world of the nineteenth century. Underscoring the literary innovations in his writing during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, this text focuses on the selected works that complement the current view of Hunt as a Romantic writer and show the independence in his critical approach and use of poetic language. With an episodic, chronological approach, this is an important reassessment of Hunt’s substantial contributions to several different genres, providing a fascinating account of the significant impact of his works on audiences during the Romantic period.

The Poems of Lord Byron - Don Juan

The Poems of Lord Byron - Don Juan
Author: Jane Stabler
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 1280
Release: 2024-08-07
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1040270557

Byron’s Don Juan is one of the greatest poems in the English language. Byron’s friends initially agreed that ‘it will be impossible to publish this’. Byron prevailed, however, and the first two cantos were issued anonymously after much editorial revision. Even in its revised form, Don Juan was perceived as a radical attack on establishment values; the poem has remained a beacon for freedom of speech and retains its power to shock. Since it was published in 1819–24, all printed editions of the poem have used the text prepared by Byron’s publishers, John Murray and John Hunt. This is the first new text of the poem to be printed in two hundred years. The Longman edition is based on a comprehensive line-by-line analysis of the manuscripts, so the text of the poem follows Byron’s own voice, pace and pauses, rather than the grammatical punctuation and more cautious word choice inserted by his nineteenth-century editors. The Longman Don Juan has been annotated afresh, allowing readers to see where Byron left open the choice of words or rhymes, and demonstrating the extraordinary breadth and depth of his literary allusions, topical and cultural references, and socially coded jokes. Textual annotation includes reception history, extensive bibliographies and a detailed chronology, situating Don Juan in the literary, scientific, dramatic, political, musical and social life of the early nineteenth century. A detailed index to the poem and annotation provides an unparalleled resource for students and scholars.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Author: Fiona Sampson
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2011-09-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0571279880

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature. Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory -- Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. -- To

The Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt

The Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt
Author: Robert Morrison
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 2782
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1000743969

This edition makes available in a single edition all of Hunt's major works, fully annotated and with a consolidated index. The set will include all of Hunt's poetry, and an extensive selection of his periodical essays.

Poetic Language and Political Engagement in the Poetry of Keats

Poetic Language and Political Engagement in the Poetry of Keats
Author: Jack L. Siler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1136085068

In this incisive volume Siler traces the uneasy relationship between the content of Keats' poems and social history. In the process, he discovers that the early poems are linked with the mission statement of the radical journal Annals of the Fine Arts, whilst the poems after Endymion reveal a poet more concerned with the nature of poetic representation--its why and wherefore.

Shelley’s Poetics of Reticence

Shelley’s Poetics of Reticence
Author: Merrilees Roberts
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-04-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000071375

Exploring the rhetorical and phenomenological links between shame and reticence, this book examines the psychology of Shelley’s anguished poet-Subject. Shelley’s struggles with the fragility of the ‘self’ have largely been seen as the result of thinking which connects emotional hyperstimulation to moral and political undermining of the individual ‘will’. This work takes a different approach, suggesting that Shelley’s insecurities stemmed from anxieties about the nature of aesthetic self-representation. Shame is an appropriate affective marker of such anxiety because it occurs at the cusp between internal and external self-evaluation. Shelley’s reticent poetics transfers an affective sense of shame to the reader and provokes interpretive responsibility. Paying attention to the affective contours of texts, this book presents new readings of Shelley’s major works. These interpretations show that awakening the reader’s ethical discretion creates a constructive dynamic which challenges influential deconstructive readings of the unfinished nature of Shelley’s work and thought.

Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School

Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School
Author: Jeffrey N. Cox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2004-05-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780521604239

Jeffrey N. Cox refines our conception of 'second generation' Romanticism by placing it within the circle of writers around Leigh Hunt that came to be known as the 'Cockney School'. Offering a theory of the group as a key site for cultural production, Cox challenges the traditional image of the Romantic poet as an isolated figure by recreating the social nature of the work of Shelley, Keats, Hunt, Hazlitt, Byron, and others, as they engaged in literary contests, wrote poems celebrating one another, and worked collaboratively on journals and other projects. Cox also recovers the work of neglected writers such as John Hamilton Reynolds, Horace Smith, and Cornelius Webb as part of the rich social and cultural context of Hunt's circle. This book not only demonstrates convincingly that a 'Cockney School' existed, but shows that it was committed to putting literature in the service of social, cultural, and political reform.

The Absent God in the Works of William Wordsworth

The Absent God in the Works of William Wordsworth
Author: Eliza Borkowska
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2020-11-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000263916

Called by one of its reviewers "Wordsworth’s biographia literaria," this book takes its reader on a fascinating journey into the mind of the poet whose attitude to God and religion points to a major shift in Western culture. The monograph probes the philosophical foundations of Wordsworth’s religious outlook, drawing attention to this First Generation Romantic poet as the author who happened to record in his verse the rise to prominence of some of the intellectual and spiritual challenges and the most troublesome uncertainties that have defined Western man ever since. The book constitutes a self-contained whole and can be read independently. Simultaneously, it creates an unusual duet with the companion volume, The Presence of God in the Works of William Wordsworth. These two works can be regarded as contraries—or negatives: one offering an ironically positive reading of Wordsworth’s religious discourse, the other offering a reading which is positively negative.