Tennyson is not known for his scepticism. This book argues that he should be. It proposes a revaluation of the way in which his work is read. Tennyson has always been understood as a poet who is committed primarily to endorsing spiritual values. But this study argues that much of his poetry is driven by a metaphysical scepticism that is associated, in part, with rational perspectives deriving from Enlightenment thought. The scepticism in Tennyson's poetry partakes in the complex generation of the modern that was taking place in his era. One of the purposes of the study is to demonstrate that...

This full scale study discusses Angela Carter's fiction in chronological order, and notes that although her themes are fairly consistent throughout her work, consistency of theme is not the same as repetition. The new angles and emphases that develop are partly from Carter's immersion in the changing intellectual debates of the times and, concurrently, arise from the reading she was doing at the different stages of her life, which stretched from the medieval through de Sade to Foucault.