Romantic Presences

by Robinson, Jeffrey C

• ISBN13: 9780882681986
• ISBN10: 0882681982
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-01-01
• Publisher: Barrytown/Station Hill Press, Inc.

Summary

This book is a set of meditations in prose and poetry on a range of images and topics from the repertoire of early nineteenth-century English poetry and prose. Many of the images are familiar, stock properties of the Romantic tradition—e.g. the skylark, the nightingale, the sigh. Others are not precisely images but historical figures who have gained a mythic status – e.g. “Robert Burns,” “S. T. Coleridge.” And finally, there are images that have no place in the traditional repertoire because they come from women’s writing – e.g. “washing day.” Such “new” elements of Romanticism have been folded in with the old, unobtrusively, in order to create the impression that all implicitly were already there. This book is not intended to be a series of explications of poetry. Instead, images lift themselves out of their formal and functional settings, coming forward in their own right as “presences,” recovering their power for current readers.

Author Biography

Jeffrey C. Robinson is a professor of English Literature at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction	p. 1
Excess	p. 5
Skylark	p. 7
"Lucy"	p. 16
Interlude: A Break in Syntax, Theme, and Location	p. 33
"Lucy" and Juana: Poetry and Death	p. 41
Bridge and Stream	p. 44
Sweet	p. 60
A Sigh	p. 66
Sighs and Blushes	p. 70
"STC" (By Two Female Poets)	p. 72
Reclining Poet	p. 75
Night	p. 88
Now	p. 98
"1798"	p. 105
Wanderer	p. 108
Wanderer - II	p. 112
Name	p. 115
Rosamund Gray	p. 117
Brotherhood (of Poets)	p. 123
Blake, Death of (Swinburne)	p. 125
Mountain Daisy	p. 126
Addiction (An Interlude)	p. 134
Speed (An Interlude)	p. 139
Untrodden Way	p. 142
"Werter"	p. 144
Secrets	p. 147
Pursuit	p. 151
Pursuit - II	p. 158
"Still Sad Music"	p. 159
"Imagination"	p. 161
Nightingale	p. 165
Ponder	p. 174
Maniac	p. 178
Correspondences	p. 181
Volcano	p. 183
Death	p. 185
Oblivion	p. 187
Fetters	p. 191
Opiate	p. 195
"Je est un autre"	p. 198
"Slow Time"	p. 201
Aleatory Romanticism	p. 203
Letter-Bell	p. 210
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