Some Aspects of the Conservative Attitude toward Poetry in English Criticism, 1798-1820

PMLA ◽  
1945 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 386-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
William S. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
National State ◽  
National Crisis ◽  
Lyrical Ballads ◽  
Conservative Attitude ◽  
Literary System

So reactionary was Lord Liverpool, whose Cabinet was formed in 1812 and lasted until 1827, that a French critic remarked that had Lord Liverpool been present on the first day of creation he would have cried out, “Mon Dieu, conservons le chaos.” Though this remark was aimed at one man, quite as appropriately it could have been directed at most of the gentlemen of the periodical press between 1798 and 1820; for this period, like many another era in time of national crisis, made literary criticism the handmaiden of politics, religion, and morality. During few periods have the review and literary departments of the magazines been so full of banal religious and political cant as during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. The ink might scarcely have been dry on Lyrical Ballads and the Preface, but so disturbed was the national state that everything conspired to bring about a thoroughly uncritical outlook and to make the age a most unpropitious one for launching a new literary system. In this short study the fortunes of Wordsworth and the “new poets” cannot be examined, but some of the forces of reaction with which they had to contend, at least as reflected in the periodicals, can be made clear.

Balaam and Bedlam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Romantic Poetry ◽  
Edinburgh Review ◽  
Moral Management ◽  
Quarterly Review ◽  
Forensic Rhetoric

This chapter shows how contemporary reviews of Romantic poetry, and the hostile rhetoric of insanity they used, both stigmatized and popularized the Romantic mad poet. A forensic rhetoric, drawing directly on medical ideas of partial insanity and critical ‘moral management’, was deployed by the periodical press in the first quarter of the nineteenth century—first the quarterlies like the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review, then later new capricious and aggressive magazines such as Blackwood’s, and more quotidian or staid journals—against all of the major Romantic poets. The chapter shows, moreover, how the polemical terms in which Romantic poets were dismissed also held the seeds of their later canonization. The periodical critics, while they used slurs of meaningless insanity to dismiss poetry for political and reactionary ends, also spread the fame of ‘mad genius’, turning a marginalized opinion on the link between creativity and disorder into a cultural phenomenon.

scholarly journals From Albion's shore: Lord Byron' poetry in Slovene translations until 1945

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 51-59
Author(s):  
Igor Maver
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
Lord Byron ◽  
Literary Magazine ◽  
Lyrical Poetry ◽  
Lyrical Ballads ◽  
National Unification ◽  
Walter Scott

The publication in 1830 of the early poems of the doyen of Slovene poetry - Dr France Prešeren  in Kranjska čbelica (The Carniola Bee) - marks the beginning of Slovene Romanticism, which ends in 1848, -with the last of his poems published in the fifth volume of the same literary magazine. The period from 1830 to the »revolutionary« year of 1848 is thus committed to Romanticism as the leading movement of Slovene literature, artfully embodied in Prešeren's fine lyrical poetry that aimed at and considerably contributed to national unification and identification, as well as in the Europe-oriented literary criticism of Matija čop.  Comparing the trends of the English and Slovene Romantic Revival, we can readily establish that the emergence of Romantic tenets expressed in poetry was somewhat late on Slovene ground. In England, of course, the crucial years are1789, when Lyrical Ballads were published by Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the year 1832, which marks the death of Sir Walter Scott.

scholarly journals The Scientific Supernatural in the Fin de Siècle Novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kathryn Magaña
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Validity ◽  
Material World ◽  
Scientific Legacy ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Understanding Of Science

<p>Nineteenth-century literary criticism has mainly focused on lasting scientific advancements, at the expense of a more comprehensive history, when examining the legacy of science in fiction. Yet there were many sciences that were considered plausible during the nineteenth century which have since been disproven and the ideas relegated to the realms of pseudo-science. This thesis examines novels by Bram Stoker, Marie Corelli, Florence Marryat, and Arthur Machen with attention to the scientific supernatural. Throughout this thesis, the term “scientific supernatural” will be used to reference mid- to late nineteenth-century scientific investigations conducted by various types of scientists into the supernatural and the set of phenomena that were the subject of these investigations, regardless of the twenty-first century status of the topics under investigation. Phenomena such as mesmerism, clairvoyance, and Spiritualism, which seem to be supernatural in their interactions with material aspects of the world or the supernatural realm, were studied by scientists with the understanding that they were engaged in scientific pursuits. “Scientific supernatural” is, therefore, intended to represent the scientific inquiries into the supernatural and only the areas of study that were, for a time at least, accepted as scientific by some scientists and often by society at large, evident in scientific periodicals, books, and personal documents, into the fin de siècle. Many supernatural elements in literature at the end of the nineteenth century are representations of phenomena that were being investigated by contemporary scientists and, as such, are represented within fiction as having a claim to scientific validity. This term represents the status of the various phenomena in the historical moment where the supernatural realm seemed to be the next place for science to explore.  This thesis is separated into an introduction and three chapters that discuss different depictions of the scientific supernatural. The Introduction surveys criticism of the scientific supernatural and of science in connection with late nineteenth-century literature to lay a foundation of the historical context for this science and establish a gap in current criticism of science and the fin de siècle novel. Chapter 1 explores two different representations of Spiritualism and the way the authors use science to support the worldviews taught through their fiction. The novels discussed in Chapter 2 deal with observed effects of the supernatural in the material world and the problem of explaining these occurrences when science had no certain explanation for them. Chapter 3 examines fictional depictions of scientific experimentation that represent the author’s hope that scientific evidence of the supernatural will be uncovered. In each case, the authors suggest there is something yet to be discovered which will allow science to explain the supernatural as definitely real and capable of interacting with the material world.  Fictional representations of the scientific supernatural such as those discussed throughout this thesis reveal a wider understanding of science at the fin de siècle than has previously been addressed in literary criticism. As such, this thesis suggests the need for a broader critical understanding of science, and scientific potential, that mirrors that of fin de siècle English conception of science to more fully inform the scientific legacy left in fiction of the time.</p>

From national panegyrics to stage scandal: Athanasios Diakos in history

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Sampatakakis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Typical Response ◽  
National Crisis ◽  
The People

On 26 March 1894 a panegyric titled ‘Athanasios Diakos in history’ was delivered at the Society of the Friends of the People. At the dusk of the nineteenth century, this speech summarized the literary programme of a nationalizing attachment to the heroes of 1821 and their romantic monumentalization. More than a century later, the theatrical scandal of Lena Kitsopoulou’s Athanasios Diakos: The Return (Greek Festival, Athens, 2012) was a typical response to the breach inflicted on the canonical meanings and the established interpretations of the myth of Diakos. Amid a national crisis, the transformation of Diakos into a modern-day kebabhouse owner who harasses his wife and his immigrant employee performed a critical transposition of the hero into a toxic unheroic present. After reviewing the histories and mythologies of Athanasios Diakos, this article discusses Kitsopoulou’s production and its reception in order to argue that the playwright called upon a dramaturgy of suspicion that threatened the credibility of a heroic past, destabilizing thereby national expectations and assumptions.

Intergenerational Collaboration and Conflict: Women’s Periodicals at the Fin de Siècle

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis Easley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
New Woman ◽  
New Products ◽  
New Age ◽  
Women's Magazines ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Women's Periodicals

This chapter examines conflicts between different generations of women in the late decades of the nineteenth century as played out in the popular press, including the burgeoning market for women’s magazines. It shows how print culture, including in new feminist magazines, constructed and then exploited divisions between the ‘old lady’, ‘new woman’ and ‘new girl’, often for the purposes of advertising new products. It shows how at this time the modern woman was represented in the periodical press as a consumer and advertising commodity, as a sensationalist figure of controversy, as well as a symbol of the new age.

Afterword

Chronometres ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 191-196
Author(s):  
Krista Lysack
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Devotional Poetry ◽  
Gift Books ◽  
Reading Materials ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Devotional Reading ◽  
Cheap Print

If we imagine that a Victorian common reader of devotion has accumulated all the devotional books and print that have been the subject of this study we might see, gathered together on a table or shelf, a jumble of things: devotional poetry, family prayer manuals, Sunday-reading books and periodicals, gift books, and daily textbooks. Reading meant for the masses lies alongside serious works, cheap print mingles with expensive gift volumes. Broad Church, Tractarian, and Nonconformist doctrine sit together in easy company. In considering the range of what counted as devotional reading materials for Victorians, I have endeavoured to think beyond generic categories and denominational affiliations. The companionability of these items, their miscellany and assortment, reminds us that they were objects that were handled and re-read by their owners. And even when they were not being read, they remained as materials on display and as available to the next reader who might come along. This was the case with Monica Madden’s only occasionally- (and possibly never-) read copy of Keble in Chapter One. The profusion of religious publishing in the nineteenth century meant that devotional observance could also be a leisurely and a consumerist pursuit. But Elaine Freedgood (2013), who has pointed out how “things … still do not get taken seriously” in literary criticism,...

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