Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Gothic & Romance

Edited with an introduction and notes by James T. Boulton.

'One of the greatest essays ever written on art.' The Guardian

Edmund Burke s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is one of the most important works of aesthetics ever published. Whilst many writers have taken up their pen to write of "the beautiful," Burke s subject here was the quality he uniquely distinguished as "the sublime" an all-consuming force beyond beauty that compelled terror as much as rapture in all who beheld it. It was an...

First published in 1984, this title examines the development of a special rhetoric in Dickens' work, which, by using grotesque effects, challenged the complacency of his middle-class Victorian readers. The study begins by exploring definitions of the grotesque and moves on to look at three key aspects that particularly impacted on Dickens' imagination: popular theatre (especially pantomime), caricature, and the tradition of the Gothic novel. Michael Hollington traces the development of Dickens' application of the grotesque from his early work to his late novels, showing how its use becomes...

Northanger Abbey was one of Jane Austen's earliest manuscripts; Persuasion was her last. Published together in a single volume after her death, the two books differ widely. Northanger Abbey is a spirited, Gothic parody, while Persuasion has increasingly been seen as a new direction for the Austen canon. The two texts have been widely analysed and debated since publication, and continue to be so today.

In this Readers' Guide, Enit Karafili Steiner:

- delineates a clear trajectory through the books' many interpretations over two centuries, mapping these out...

First published in 1983, this book examines a work whose intricacies have baffled and infuriated generations of readers and proposes a theory of Coleridge s writing habits that "explain(s) his explanation." The author painstakingly analyses the "Biographia s "organising structure distinguishing between the daring conception and often inept execution of Coleridge s idea of critical discourse. It is argued that Coleridge s autobiographical format present a richly metaphorical "self" whose literary life has led to the now-famous doctrine of secondary imagination. The author s command of...

First published in 1983, this books aims to guide Wordsworth students through his difficult masterpiece by reading it in continuous sequence and making its sense emerge. The special value of this commentary is that it explains the structure of "The Prelude "by encouraging study of the poem as a continuous whole rather than selectively looking at individual sections an approach that has typified modern criticism of the work. This depends upon a close attention to the careful arrangement of the verse paragraphs, all of which make an indispensable contribution to the overall thought pattern,...

First published in 1969, this book places Coleridge s literary criticism against the background of his philosophical thinking, examining his theories about criticism and the nature of poetry. Particular attention is paid to the structure of "Biographia Literaria, "Coleridge s distinction between Imagination and Fancy, his definitions of the poetic characters of Shakespeare and Wordsworth, his analysis of the mental state of audiences in theatres, and his interpretations of "Paradise Lost," " Hamlet "and Aeschylus " Prometheus. "The emphasis throughout is on how Coleridge thought rather...

First published in 1982. In this study of Wordsworth s major poetry, the author explores the conflict between the poet s celebration of an impersonal earth and his concern for the most intensely personal relationships. The opening chapter concentrates on Wordsworth s struggle to describe the natural world and the extraordinary claims he makes for the natural landscape which are shown to derive not from vague mysticism but precisely articulated common sense. The close readings of "Michael, The Idiot Boy, Tintern Abbey" and "The Ruined Cottage," and poems as passages on solitaries are...

First published in 1966. Despite the intense interest in Coleridge in the twentieth century, this book represents the first study of Coleridge s poetry to be published in Britain. It is also the first to be based upon the conclusion that Coleridge s greatness as a poet is a matter of achievement rather than aspiration and to argue that his literary career was nearly half a century long, consisting of more than just well-known texts like "The Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan." The author argues the formality of the romantic achievement and its success in creating whole and fully realised...

First published in 1962, this book reveals unexpected complexity or equivocation in Wordsworth s use of certain key words, particularly image, form and shape . The author endeavours to show that this complexity is related to the poet s awareness of the ambiguity of the perceptual process. Numerous passages from "The Prelude "and other poems are analysed to illustrate the argument and to show that, because of this doubt or hidden perplexity, Wordsworth s poetry has a far richer texture, is more concentrated, intricately organised and loaded with ambivalent meanings than it would otherwise...

Scott's Shadow is the first comprehensive account of the flowering of Scottish fiction between 1802 and 1832, when post-Enlightenment Edinburgh rivaled London as a center for literary and cultural innovation. Ian Duncan shows how Walter Scott became the central figure in these developments, and how he helped redefine the novel as the principal modern genre for the representation of national historical life.

Duncan traces the rise of a cultural nationalist ideology and the ascendancy of Scott's Waverley novels in the years after Waterloo. He argues that the key to...