Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity

This 1999 book offers a theory of reception governing Romantic poetry, through its culture of posterity.

Andrew Bennett (Author)

9780521641449, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 December 1999

288 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.59 kg

'An impressive though sometimes relentless book.' Michael O'Neill, The Times Literary Supplement

This 1999 book examines the way in which the Romantic period's culture of posterity inaugurates a tradition of writing which demands that the poet should write for an audience of the future: the true poet, a figure of neglected genius, can be properly appreciated only after death. Andrew Bennett argues that this involves a radical shift in the conceptualization of the poet and poetic reception, with wide-ranging implications for the poetry and poetics of the Romantic period. He surveys the contexts for this transformation of the relationship between poet and audience, engaging with issues such as the commercialization of poetry, the gendering of the canon, and the construction of poetic identity. Bennett goes on to discuss the strangely compelling effects which this reception theory produces in the work of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron, who have come to embody, for posterity, the figure of the Romantic poet.

Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: 1. Writing for the future
2. The Romantic culture of posterity
3. Engendering posterity
Part II: 4. Wordsworth's survival
5. Coleridge's conversation
6. Keats's prescience
7. Shelley's ghosts
8. Byron's success
Afterword
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]