Romanticism, Revolution and Language
The Fate of the Word from Samuel Johnson to George Eliot

A examination of the continuities between Romantic and Victorian authors from a highly respected senior scholar of Romanticism.

John Beer (Author)

9780521897556, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 April 2009

244 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.8 cm, 0.53 kg

'Romanticism, Revolution and Language is unquestionably a major achievement. It reexamines a tradition that John Beer has made peculiarly his own…' Romanticism

The repercussions of the French Revolution included erosion of many previously held certainties in Britain, as in the rest of Europe. Even the authority of language as a cornerstone of knowledge was called into question and the founding principles of intellectual disciplines challenged, as Romantic writers developed new ways of expressing their philosophy of the imagination and the human heart. This book traces the impact of revolution on language, from William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, to William Hazlitt, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot. A leading scholar in Romantic literature and theology, John Beer offers a persuasive new account of post-revolutionary continuities between the major Romantic writers and their Victorian successors.

1. 'Democracy' in Somerset and beyond
2. Politics, sensibility and the adequacy of language
3. The heart of Lyrical Ballads
4. The Prelude: a poem in process
5. Words or images? Blake's representation of history
6. Blake, Coleridge, and 'The Riddle of the World'
7. Challenges from the non-verbal and return to the word
8. The nature of Hazlitt's taste
9. Jane Austen's progress
10. Languages of memory and passion: Tennyson, Gaskell and the Brontës
11. George Eliot and the future of language
Index.

Subject Areas: History [HB], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature & literary studies [D]