Changes of Address: Epic Invocation in Anglophone Romanticism

The epic poet’s invocation to the Muse is no sooner underway than it must demonstrate that the power it seeks has been conferred already. Inspiration is as inspiration does: this generic tautology came under chronic pressure within the dispensation of Romanticism, when epic greatness migrated into the psyche, creativity became heroism, and bards emerged as their own protagonists. This chapter analyzes variations on the classical template that were executed on either side of 1800 by poets major and minor, female and male, British and American. It shows how the convention of claiming the Muse’s favors became a feat that epitomized, at the threshold of the text, Romanticism’s epic adventure.