Synopses & Reviews
This collection of new essays challenges the traditional conception that British Romanticism was rooted in nature and rural life, by showing that much of what was new about Romanticism was born in the city. The essays examine the works and events of the Romantic period from the point of view of the urban world, where rapid developments in population, industry, communication, trade, and technology set the stage and the tone for many of the great achievements in literature and culture. The great metropolis appears as both fact and figure: London is its paradigm, but the metropolitan perspective is also borrowed and projected elsewhere. In this volume, some of the most exciting critics of Romanticism explore diverse cultural productions from poems and paintings, to exhibition sites, panoramas, and political organizations to do long-overdue justice to the place of the city - both as topic and as location - in British Romanticism.
Synopsis
Some of the most exciting critics of Romanticism do long-overdue justice to the place of the city in British Romanticism.
About the Author
James Chandler is Richard J. and Barbara E. Franke Professor in the Department of English, University of Chicago.Kevin Gilmartin is Associate Professor of Literature at the California Institute of Technology.
Table of Contents
Introduction: engaging the eidometropolis James Chandler and Kevin Gilmartin; Part I. Metropolis, Nation, and Empire: 1. Edinburgh, capital of the nineteenth century Ian Duncan; 2. Discriminations, or Romantic cosmopolitanisms in London Jon Klancher; Part II. Urban Radicalism and Reform: 3. London and the London Corresponding Society John Barrell; 4. Blake's metropolitan radicalism Saree Makdisi; 5. Envy rising Frances Ferguson; Part III. Metropolitan Spectacle: 6. Urbanity and the spectacle of art Ann Bermingham; 7. Mystagogues of revolution: Cagliostro, de Loutherbourg and Romantic London Iain McCalman; 8. 'The Temple lives': the Lyceum and Romantic show business Simon During; Part IV. The New Poetics of Urban Publicity: 9. Manufacturing the Romantic image: Hazlitt and Coleridge lecturing Peter Manning; 10. The artifactual sublime: making London poetry Anne Janowitz; 11. Venice Celeste Langan.