European Literatures in Britain, 1815–1832: Romantic Translations
Romantic Translations

Sheds new light on the presence and impact of Continental European literary traditions in post-Napoleonic Britain.

Diego Saglia (Author)

9781108445122, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 November 2020

285 pages
22.7 x 14.9 x 1.7 cm, 0.419 kg

'His book must be understood as an invitation to approach the big questions again, refreshed and renewed. This is the sort of intelligent challenge Romanticists and Romanticism needs. His excellent book is accommodating yet partial, compendious yet incomplete. It is an incitement to rethink Romanticism and its reach.' Bysshe Inigo Coffey, The Wordsworth Circle

Studies of British Romanticism have traditionally tended to envisage it as an intensely local, indeed insular, phenomenon. Yet, just as the seemingly isolated British Isles became more and more central in international geo-political and economic contexts between the 1780s and the 1830s, so too literature and culture were characterized by an increasingly close and relevant dialogue with foreign and especially Continental European traditions, both past and contemporary. Diego Saglia casts new light on the significantly transformative impact of this dialogue on Britain during the years that saw a return to unimpeded cross-border cultural traffic after the end of the Napoleonic emergency. Focusing on modes of translation and appropriation in a variety of literary and cultural forms, this book reconsiders the notion of the supposed intrinsic insularity of Britain through the lens of new key questions about the national, international and transnational features of Romantic-period literature and culture.

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction: Continental literatures in Romantic-period Britain
1. Periodicals and the construction of European literatures
2. Interpreting nations: 1820s anthologies of foreign poetry
3. Italian studies and cultural translation at Holland House
4. Foreign presences on the national stage
5. Continental voices and post-Napoleonic politics in Southey, Byron and Hemans
Coda: the European vistas of historical fiction
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Napoleonic Wars [HBWH], National liberation & independence, post-colonialism [HBTR], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS]