Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T09:16:31.337Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

17 - The new poetries

from Part III - Histories: Writing in the New Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2009

Get access

Summary

‘What’s new?’

Something, anyway, was stirring. Whether polemical ‘experiment’, flaunted ‘innovation’ or coded ally of political ‘liberty’, a new poetry was refusing imposed or inherited forms as tyranny, as strictures of outworn prestige, institution or just plain old bad habit. The signs were everywhere. ‘I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Mans’, declared Blake’s Los (Jerusalem, plate 10). If Dryden argued that rhyme and metrical law were necessary to put ‘bounds to a wilde over-flowing Fancy’, Wordsworth, though hewing to metre and often rhyme, recoiled from ‘the bondage of definite form’. He went so far as to equate ‘all good poetry’ with ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. This last axiom is from his Preface to the second, signed edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), a document that declared a refusal of ‘known habits of association’ in the production of and judgements about poetry. Looking back in 1817, Coleridge marked a watershed in Wordsworth’s ‘awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom’ and from ‘the film of familiarity’ – not only in modes of perception, but in the very excitement of poetic events. Shelley would soon raise the stakes in A Defence of Poetry, celebrating the power of poetry to transform everything within and without: poetry ‘strips the veil of familiarity from the world’ and, in correspondence, ‘purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, M. H., The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, New York: Norton, 1953.
Abrams, M. H., Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, New York: Norton, 1971.
Abrams, M. H.,‘Structure and style in the Greater Romantic Lyric’ in Bloom, H. (ed.), Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism, New York: Norton, 1965.
Attridge, Derek, Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Beaumont, George, 1 May 1805, The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Selincourt, Ernest de, The Early Years, 1787–1805, 2nd edn, rev. Shaver, Chester L. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).
Behrendt, Stephen C., and Kramer Linkin, Harriet (eds.), Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception, Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1999.
Bloom, Harold, ‘The Breaking of Form’, Deconstruction & Criticism, New York: Seabury Press, 1979.
Bloom, Harold,‘The Internalization of Quest-romance’, in Bloom, H. (ed.), Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism, New York: Norton, 1970.
Bloom, Harold (ed.), Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism, New York: Norton, 1970.
Booth, Bradford, A Cabinet of Gems, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1938.
Brown, Marshall, ‘Romanticism and Enlightenment’, in The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, ed. Curran, Stuart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Butler, James and Green, Karen ed., Lyrical Ballads, 1800, in ‘Lyrical Ballads’ and Other Poems, 1797–1800, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992).
Butler, Marilyn, Romantics, Rebels, and Reactionaries, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Byron, , states his aim to John Murray, 23 August 1821. Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Marchand, Leslie A., 12 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973–82), vol. VIII.
Chandler, James K., England in 1819, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Christensen, Jerome, Lord Byron’s Strength: Romantic Writing and Commercial Society, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Collings, David, Wordsworthian Errancies: The Poetics of Cultural Dismemberment, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Cox, Jeffrey N., ‘Lamia, Isabella, and The Eve of St. Agnes’, in The Cambridge Companion to John Keats, ed. Wolfson, Susan J., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Cox, Jeffrey N., Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and their Circle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Curran, Stuart, Poetic Form and British Romanticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Curran, Stuart,‘Romantic Poetry: Why and Wherefore?’, in The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, ed. Curran, Stuart, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Curran, Stuart,‘Romantic Poetry: The I Altered’, in Romanticism and Feminism, ed. Mellor, Anne K., Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Curran, Stuart, Shelley’s Annus Mirabilis: The Maturing of an Epic Vision, San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1975.
Curran, Stuart (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Dawson, P. M. S., ‘Poetry in an Age of Revolution’, in The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, ed. Curran, Stuart, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Dyer, Gary, ‘Thieves, Boxers, Sodomites, Poets: Being Flash to Byron’s Don Juan’, PMLA 116:3 (May 2001).Google Scholar
Eilenberg, Susan, Strange Power of Speech: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Literary Possession, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Engell, James and Bate, W. Jackson, ed.,Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions (1817), (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), vol. II.
Fay, Elizabeth, Becoming Wordsworthian: A Performative Aesthetic, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.
Ferguson, Frances, Wordsworth: Language as Counter-spirit, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977.
Galperin, William H., The Return of the Visible in British Romanticism, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Galperin, William H., Revision and Authority in Wordsworth: The Interpretation of a Career, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
Glen, Heather, Vision and Disenchantment: Blake’s ‘Songs’ and Wordsworth’s ‘Lyrical Ballads’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Goodman, Kevis, Georgic Modernity and British Romanticism: Poetry and the Mediation of History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Goodridge, John, and Keegan, Bridget, ‘John Clare and the Traditions of Labouring-class Verse’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830, ed. Keymer, T. and Mee, J., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Hartman, Geoffrey, Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1787–1814, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964.
Henderson, W. O. and Chaloner, W. H., trans. and ed. The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958).
Jacobus, Mary, Romanticism, Writing, and Sexual Difference, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Jacobus, Mary, Tradition & Experiment in Wordsworth’s ‘Lyrical Ballads’ (1798), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.
Johnson, Samuel, Dictionary of the English Language (London: Longman, 1755–73).
Jones, Frederick L., ed., The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), vol. II.
Jones, Steven E., Satire and Romanticism, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
Kandl, John, ‘The Politics of Keats’s Early Poetry’, in The Cambridge Companion to John Keats, ed. Wolfson, Susan J., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Keach, William, Arbitrary Power: Romanticism, Language, Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Keach, William, Shelley’s Style, New York: Methuen, 1984.
Keats, John, John Keats: A Longman Cultural Edition, ed. Wolfson, Susan J., New York: Longman, 2007.
Keymer, Thomas, and Mee, Jon (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Kucich, Greg, ‘Keats, Shelley, Byron, and the Hunt Circle’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830, ed. Keymer, Thomas and Mee, Jon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Levin, Susan, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987.
Levinson, Marjorie, Keats’s Life of Allegory: The Origins of a Style, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.
Magnuson, Paul, ‘The Lake School: Wordsworth and Coleridge’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830, ed. Keymer, Thomas and Mee, Jon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Manning, Peter, Byron and his Fictions, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1978.
Manning, Peter,‘Childe Harold in the Marketplace: From Romaunt to Handbook’, MLQ 52 (1991).Google Scholar
Manning, Peter, Reading Romantics: Text and Context, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Manning, Peter,‘Wordsworth in the Keepsake’ in Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-century British Publishing and Reading Practices, ed. Jordan, John O. and Patten, Robert L., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome J., ed. Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–93), vol. IV
McGann, Jerome J., Byron and Romanticism, ed. Solderholm, James, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
McGann, Jerome J., The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Mee, Jon, ‘Blake and the Poetics of Enthusiasm’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830, ed. Keymer, Thomas and Mee, Jon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Mellor, Anne K., Romanticism and Gender, New York: Routledge, 1992.
Mellor, Anne K.,‘Women’s Political Poetry’, in Mothers of the Nation: Women’s Political Writing in England, 1780–1830, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Mills, Howard ed., The Four Ages of Poetry, in Olliers Literary Miscellany 1 (1820); rpt Thomas Love Peacock: Memoirs of Shelley and other Essays and Reviews, (New York University Press, 1970).
Moore, Thomas, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notices of His Life, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1830), vol. I.
Owen, W. J. B. and Smyser, Jane Worthingtoned., ‘Preface to the Edition of 1815’, in The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), vol. IIIGoogle Scholar
Page, Judith W., Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Pascoe, Judith, ‘ “Unsex’d females”: Barbauld, Robinson, and Smith’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830, ed. Keymer, Thomas and Mee, Jon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Pinch, Adela, Strange Fits of Passion: Epistemologies of Emotion, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Prothero, Rowland E., ed., The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, (London: John Murray, 1900), vol. IV.
Rajan, Tilottama, Dark Interpreter: The Discourse of Romanticism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980.
Reiman, Donald H. and Fraistat, Neil, ed. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, (London and New York: Norton, 2002).
Renier, Anne, Friendship’s Offering, London: Private Libraries Association, 1964.
Roe, Nicholas, John Keats and the Culture of Dissent, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
Rollins, Hyder E., ed., The Letters of John Keats, 1814–1821, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), vol. II
Rosenberg, Harold, The Traditions of the New, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965.
Ross, Marlon B., The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women’s Poetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Rutherford, Andrew, ed. Byron: The Critical Heritage, (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970).
Schor, Esther, Bearing the Dead: The British Culture of Mourning from the Enlightenment to Victoria, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Scrivener, Michael Henry, Radical Shelley, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Selincourt, Ernest de, ed., The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, The Later Years, 2nd edn, rev. Alan G. Hill, 2 Parts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978–9).
Simpson, David, ‘Romanticism, Criticism and Theory’, in The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, ed. Curran, Stuart, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Simpson, David, Wordsworth and the Figurings of the Real, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1982.
Simpson, David, Wordsworth’s Historical Imagination, New York: Methuen, 1987.
Sperry, Stuart M., ‘Richard Woodhouse’s Interleaved and Annotated Edition of Keats’s 1817 Poems’, Literary Monographs, vol. I, ed. Rothstein, Eric and Dunseath, Thomas (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967).Google Scholar
Sperry, Stuart M., ‘Toward a Definition of Romantic Irony in English Literature’, in Romantic and Modern: Revaluations of Literary Tradition, ed. Bornstein, George, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977.
Stabler, Jane, Byron, Poetics and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Stabler, Jane, Transitions: Burke to Byron, Barbauld to Baillie, 1790–1830, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
Swann, Karen, ‘Endymion’s Beautiful Dreamers’, in The Cambridge Companion to John Keats, ed. Wolfson, Susan J., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Swann, Karen,‘Literary Gentlemen and Lovely Ladies: The Debate on the Character of Christabel’, ELH 52 (1985).Google Scholar
Swedenberg, H. T., Jr ed., Of Dramatick Poesie. An Essay (1668). The Works of John Dryden, 19 vols., (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961–79), vol. XVII, ed. Samuel Holt Monk (1971).
Sweet, Nanora, and Melnyk, Julie (eds.), Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century, New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Todd, Janet and Butler, Marilyn, ed., The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, 7 vols. (New York University Press, 1989), vol. VII.
Vincent, Howard P., ed. The Letters of Dora Wordsworth, (Chicago: Packard, 1944).
Wasserman, Earl R., Shelley: A Critical Reading, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971.
Wolfson, Susan J., Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Wolfson, Susan J., Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Wolfson, Susan J.,‘Romanticism and the Measures of Meter’, Eighteenth-Century Life 16 ns 3 (1992).Google Scholar
Wolfson, Susan J.,‘What’s Wrong with Formalist Criticism?’, Studies in Romanticism 37 (Spring 1998).Google Scholar
Wolfson, Susan J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Keats, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Woolf, , A Writer’s Diary, ed. Woolf, Leonard (New York: Harcourt, 1954).
Wordsworth, Christopher, Memoirs of William Wordsworth, ed. Reed, Henry, 2 vols. (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851), vol. I, 172.
Wu, Duncan, ‘Keats and the “Cockney School”’, in The Cambridge Companion to John Keats, ed. Wolfson, Susan J., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Wu, Duncan, Wordsworth: An Inner Life, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×