Reading, Writing, and Romanticism The Anxiety of Reception

by Newlyn, Lucy

• ISBN13: 9780198187110
• ISBN10: 0198187114
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-06-12
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Reading, Writing, and Romanticism bridges a perceived gulf between materialist and idealist approaches to the reader. Informed by an historical awareness of Romantic hermeneutics and its later developments (as well as by an understanding of the circumstances conditioning the production andconsumption of literature in this period), the book explores how readers are imagined, addressed, figured, and theorised in Romantic poetry and criticism (1790-1830). Models of canon-formation, intertextuality and reader-response are examined alongside the existence of reading-coteries, the social practices of reading, and reforms in copyright. Consideration is given to the philosophical and ideological influences which bear upon the status of reading at thistime, as well as to the educational theories and practices which underpin reading-habits. Non-canonical writers are included, and special attention is given to the emergence of women's poetry - its repercussions for the poetics of reception.

Author Biography

Lucy Newlyn is Lecturer in English, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	xviii
Note to the Reader	xx
Part I: The Anxiety of Reception
The Sense of an Audience	3	(46)
Literacy, The Reading-Public, and Anonymous Criticism	3	(10)
Authorship and the Public Sphere	13	(10)
Critics as Judges, Advocates, and Patrons	23	(7)
Poetry, Neglect, and the Pursuit of Posthumous Reputation	30	(9)
The Threat of Modernity: Reading, Consumption, and Overpopulation	39	(10)
Case Study (1): Coleridge	49	(42)
Coleridge's Search for Sympathy	49	(6)
Figurations of the Reading-Public	55	(6)
Public Enemies, Private Friends	61	(5)
Models of Reader-Response	66	(6)
Companionable Forms: Conversation as a Poetic Ideal	72	(3)
Reading and Enchantment	75	(5)
The Construction of an Ideal Reader	80	(5)
The Rhetoric of Mystery	85	(6)
Case Study (2): Wordsworth	91	(43)
The Public	91	(8)
Coterie Audiences	99	(5)
The Conditions of Understanding: Critical Prose	104	(5)
The Implicated Reader: Poems of Dialogue, Witness, and Encounter	109	(8)
Broken Contracts, Disrupted Continuities: The Lyrical Ballads (1800)	117	(7)
Doubles and Shadowy Interpositions: An Epitaphic Theory of Reading	124	(10)
Case Study (3): Anna Barbauld	134	(39)
Barbauld's Modes of Address	137	(8)
Interventions and Trespasses	145	(6)
Enigmas of Identity and Gender	151	(4)
Sexual Politics	155	(5)
The Politics of Sympathy	160	(4)
The Reception of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven	164	(9)
Part II: Crossings on the Creative--Critical Divide
Competition and Collaboration in Periodical Culture	173	(51)
The Question of Secondariness	173	(6)
Hunt's Dialogic Method	179	(7)
Poetry-Prose Dialogue and Parody	186	(8)
Peacock: The Motives of Equivocation	194	(8)
Hazlitt and the Defence of Criticism	202	(6)
Lamb's Defence of Reading	208	(7)
Envy, Irony, and the Rivalry of Genres	215	(9)
Feminizing the Poetics of Reception	224	(39)
Women Writers and the Anxiety of Authorship	224	(8)
Attending, Listening, Sympathizing, Identifying, and Echoing	232	(5)
Hannah More and the Efficacy of Conversation	237	(5)
Ironic figures of Modesty, Self-Effacement, Anonymity, and Invisibility	242	(6)
Reading Echo: Barbauld and Jones	248	(3)
Echoic Reading and Poetic Identity: Williams, Robinson, Jewsbury, Hemans, and Landon	251	(12)
`One Power with a Double Aspect': The Formation of a System of Defences	263	(35)
The Past, Posterity, and Original Genius	263	(6)
Copyright and the Paradox of Romantic Authorship	269	(3)
The Transcendence of Popularity	272	(8)
Posthumous Fame and the Place of Criticism	280	(4)
Literary Constitutions: Analogues for the Imitation--Originality Debate in Political Discourse	284	(5)
Canon-Formation, Connectiveness, and Recuperation	289	(9)
The Terror of Futurity: Repetition, Identification, and Doubling	298	(35)
The Temporality of Reading	298	(5)
The Double Bind of Temporality: Readers as Second Selves	303	(5)
The Shakespeare--Milton Duality	308	(3)
The Defence against Repetition: Applications of a Mixed Hermeneutic	311	(6)
Women Readers and the Dangers of Sympathetic Identification	317	(5)
Gender and the Hierarchy of Genres	322	(11)
Reading Aloud: An `Ambiguous Accompaniment'	333	(39)
1798: Hazlitt on Preaching, Chanting, and Speaking	333	(6)
The Orator's Speaking Body: From Sheridan to Thelwall	339	(16)
The Politics of Reading Aloud	355	(5)
Speech-Writing, Prose-Poetry, Public-Private	360	(12)
Bibliography	372	(19)
Index	391