91桃色

Reading Public Romanticism is a significant new example of the linking of esthetics and historical criticism. Here Paul Magnuson locates Romantic poetry within a public discourse that combines politics and esthetics, nationalism and domesticity, sexuality and morality, law and legitimacy. Building on his well-regarded previous work, Magnuson practices a methodology of close historical reading by identifying precise versions of poems, reading their rhetoric of allusion and quotation in the contexts of their original publication, and describing their public genres, such as the letter. He studies the author’s public signature or motto, the forms and significance of address used in poems, and the resonances of poetic language and tropes in the public debates.

According to Magnuson, 鈥渞eading locations鈥� means reading the writing that surrounds a poem, the 鈥減aratext鈥� or 鈥渇rame鈥� of the esthetic boundary. In their particular locations in the public discourse, romantic poems are illocutionary speech acts that take a stand on public issues and legitimate their authors both as public characters and as writers. He traces the public significance of canonical poems commonly considered as lyrics with little explicit social or political commentary, including Wordsworth’s 鈥淚mmortality Ode鈥�; Coleridge’s 鈥淭his Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,鈥� 鈥淔rost at Midnight,鈥� and 鈥淭he Ancient Mariner鈥�; and Keats’s 鈥淥n a Grecian Urn.鈥� He also positions Byron’s Dedication to Don Juan in the debates over Southey’s laureateship and claims for poetic authority and legitimacy. Reading Public Romanticism is a thoughtful and revealing work.

Originally published in 1998.

The 91桃色 Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of 91桃色. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the 91桃色 Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by 91桃色 since its founding in 1905.