Romantic Medievalism: History and the Romantic Literary Ideal
The Romantic period was characterized by a new historical self-consciousness in which history, and in particular the medieval, became an important screen for comprehending the present. Recent Scholarship has proposed contending theories for understanding how the historical is used to symbolize the political in the period. Romantic Medievalism takes an original position in proposing a critical difference in how the medieval was used to interpret the present, arguing that, where as the...
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Fay (literature, U. of Massachusetts, Boston) ably assesses the diverse motivations for and embodiments of the turn toward medieval historical and literary models in 18th- and 19th-century England. She traces such medieval themes as King Arthur and troubadour poetry in works by Walter Scott, Keats, Byron, and Wordsworth, among others. The works of numerous lesser-known writers are analyzed in terms of revivalist movements which emulated Sappho, Spenser, Della Crusca, and Petrarch. This study will interest specialists in English literature. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
1Romantic Medievalism: The Ideal of History1The medieval historical mind8Romantic anachronism12The problem of the lady18Troubadourian affect242Cultivating Medievalism: Feeling History28Classes of affect33Bowers: Seward, Darwin and Coleridge37Resting places: Gray, Smith and Keats48The female troubadour: Mary Robinson and LEL543The Legacy of Arthur: Scott, Wordsworth and Byron64The legacy of Arthur67Scott and antiquarianism71Wordsworth, knight of feeling78Lancelot Byron994Keats and the Time of Romance109Dispensing with Spenserianism113Chatterton, Bannerman and 'La Belle Dame'117Keats and romance: history, memory and felt time122Dramatic action: King Stephen1385The Shelleys on Love146Courtly love150Renaissance love: The Cenci155Valperga, or love's lessons173Free love: Epipsychidion178The female knight and Emilia186Surviving love195Notes197Index230
