Biologists, historians, lawyers, art historians, and literary critics all voice arguments in the critical dialogue about what constitutes evidence in research and scholarship. They examine not only the constitution and "blurring" of disciplinary boundaries, but also the configuration of the fact-evidence distinctions made in different disciplines and historical moments; the relative function of such concepts as "self-evidence," "experience," "test," "testimony," and "textuality" in varied academic discourses; and the way "rules of evidence" are themselves products of historical developments....

Many of the writers from 1819, argues James Chandler, were acutely aware not only of their writing's place in history, but also of its place as history--a realization of a literary "spirit of the age" that resonates strongly with the current "return to history" in literary studies. Chandler explores the ties between Romantic and contemporary historicism and offers a series of cases of his own built around key texts from 1819.
"1819? At first sight, it might not seem a 'hot date'; but as James Chandler argues in his powerful book, it would be a mistake to overlook a year of such...

This book reopens the question of Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution and on English Romanticism, by examining the relationship between his confessional writings and his political theory. Gregory Dart argues that by looking at the way in which Rousseau's writings were mediated by the speeches and actions of Robespierre, we can gain a clearer and more concrete sense of the legacy he left to English writers. He shows how the writings of Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth and Hazlitt rehearse and reflect upon the Jacobin tradition in the aftermath of the Terror.

In this provocative and original study, Alan Richardson examines an entire range of intellectual, cultural, and ideological points of contact between British Romantic literary writing and the pioneering brain science of the time. Poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, and novelists such as Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, are shown to have shared a surprising extent of common ground with pioneering brain scientists including Erasmus Darwin and F. J. Gall. It demonstrates the value for literary and cultural history of learning from recent work in neuroscience and cognitive science.

Peter Murphy's book examines the tension between the material, economic pressures motivating poetry as an occupation, and traditional notions of the forces of literary history defining poetry as an art. It focuses on five writers in the Romantic period: James MacPherson, Robert Burns, James Hogg, Walter Scott, and William Wordsworth. The first four are Scottish; the economic and linguistic status of Scotland during the period makes its writers especially interesting as examples of poetic ambition. Murphy's study then crosses the border into England, offering a new perspective on Wordsworth's...

Examination of the links between literary history and science provides valuable new insights for scholars across a range of disciplines. John Wyatt explores the unexpectedly close relationship between William Wordsworth and a group of scientists in the formative years of the new science of geology. Wyatt's study of this personal and intellectual friendship challenges the simplistic opposition between Romantic-literary and scientific-materialist cultures, and shows how discourses were affected by the network of influences between poetry and geology.

Relates the revival of literary romance to the French Revolution's imaginative impact on English Romanticism.

Print Politics is the first literary study of the culture of the popular radical movement for parliamentary reform in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The period was characterized by popular agitation and repressive political measures, including trials for seditious and blasphemous libel. Kevin Gilmartin explores the styles and strategies of radical opposition in the periodical press (including the work of William Cobbett, Richard Carlile and Leigh Hunt), and in the public culture of the time.

The French Revolution sparked an ideological debate that brought Britain to the brink of its own revolution in the 1790s. As radicals turned to the writing of "Jacobin" fiction, the fear of rebellion prompted conservatives to write novels. This is the first book to examine the extent and variety of Anti-Jacobin fiction. As well as identifying an unprecedented number of these novels and considering what they contain, M.O. Grenby investigates why they were written, especially by women, and why they proved to be so popular.

Mark Canuel examines the way that Romantic poets, novelists and political writers criticized the traditional religious conformity of British political unity. Canuel reveals how writers (including Jeremy Bentham, Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth and Lord Byron) undermined the validity of religion in the British state, and envisioned a tolerant and more organized mode of social inclusion and protection. He asserts that these writers considered their works to be political and literary commentaries on religious toleration.