Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

The Romantic Imagination Of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer And J.R.R. Tolkien, Mariana Rios Maldonado, Andoni Cossio

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Studies on the presence of Romantic elements in J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary production have steadily risen to prominence, especially since the publication of Julian Eilmann’s landmark monograph J.R.R. Tolkien: Romanticist and Poet (2017) and, more recently, the edited collection The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R Tolkien (2024). Our paper seeks to contribute to this scholarly upsurge by presenting a comparative analysis of Tolkien’s works and those penned by one of the most noteworthy authors of Spanish Romanticism, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–1870). Akin to the Kunstmärchenof German Romanticism and Tolkien’s Fairy-stories, Bécquer’s Leyendas—e. g. “El monte de las …

A Review Of Books And Borrowing 1750–1830: An Analysis Of Scottish Borrowers' Registers, Sophie Coulombeau

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Affective And Emotional Encounters In/With British Women's Writing, 1600–1800, Anna-Rose Shack, Zoë Van Cauwenberg, Fauve Vandenberghe

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This special issue explores the methodological affordances of the fields of affect theory and the history of emotions in the study of women’s writing from the early modern period, the long eighteenth century and the Romantic period. It posits that the vocabularies of affect theory and the history of emotions offer a productive critical framework to approach historical women’s writing. In reading women’s writing through this lens, this special issue aims to model a theoretically flexible and historically informed approach to affect and emotions that may be taken up across and beyond traditional literary periodizations and in different forms of …

Romanticism In Tolkien’S The Hobbit: Nature And Domestic Life As A Force For Good, James J. Schultz

Journal of Tolkien Research

J.R.R. Tolkien’s works tend to be viewed by both the public and by scholars through the lens of religious moralism, or else in the context of medievalism, such as with Tom Shippey’s arguments in The Road to Middle Earth. While these take much into consideration in their arguments, these and other works tend to ignore the influences of the Romantic literary movement on Tolkien’s work. This movement, lasting from the late 1700s to the early 1800s, held ideals like beauty and nature in the highest regard. This is seen in some of the most famous works of its time, such …

Romantic Materialities And The Politics Of Care: Negotiating Movement In A More-Than-Human World, April J. Mcginnis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation explores the ecological politics of movement in Romantic literature. It contributes to a growing body of scholarship that investigates the important role that walking played in nineteenth-century literary culture. Many authors from this period cast walking as a practice that frees up not only the body but the mind as well, as the steady rhythm of the feet lulls the walker into a state of self-absorbed introspection and heightened creativity. Because of this, walking was a celebrated part of the creative process for many writers. The freedom they celebrate is possible, however, only in spaces that are level, …

‘Fiery The Angels Rose’: The Romantic Prometheanism Of Tolkien’S Diabolical Characters, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

Milton’s Satan in the seventeenth century was hardly viewed as heroic, yet in his resistance to supreme authority and bold transvaluation of values (“Evil, be thou my Good”) he emerges as a sort of tragic hero for many Romantics such as William Blake or later Herman Melville. Like Prometheus, the subject of Percy Bysshe Shelley great poetic drama, Satan is a figure of noble rebellion against omnipotent force. Tolkien’s more ‘satanic” characters, such as Melkor, Sauron, and perhaps even Saruman, do not often strike readers as heroes, yet there is a sort of Prometheanism in each of them. Viewed from …

Blake’S Green Symbols Of Humanity, Society, And Spirituality, Angela J. Heagy

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

William Blake is an exemplar of Romantic poetry characterized by depictions of the occult, the divine, and human nature. Despite Blake’s reputation as a Romantic poet, many critics claim that there is not sufficient evidence to consider him a nature writer. As a result, Blake’s name is frequently omitted from ecological discussions; some scholars go so far as to claim that Blake’s poetry demonstrates a disregard for nature altogether. This article argues that an eco-critical analysis of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience reveals nature to be Blake’s continual source of inspiration. Within this collection, nature represents the struggles …

Beyond "His Native Town": Travel And Alienation In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Erin G. Quinn

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein features a surprisingly extensive variety of locations through which Victor Frankenstein travels, ranging from the vibrant cities of London and Oxford to the isolated Orkney islands and Arctic lands. Scholars have analyzed the roles which some of these settings, namely, the Alps and the Arctic, play in the novel, and many have noted the importance of travel to the text. However, little scholarship exists assessing how Victor’s travels as a whole impact him, as well as their collective purpose within the story. Given the prominence of travel in Shelley’s text, as well as the fact …

Craftivism And Cottonian Bindings: “The Handiwork Of Greta Hall”, Helen Williams

Criticism

Edith Southey, Edith May Southey, and Sara Coleridge Jr. covered Robert Southey’s books in vibrantly printed dress fabrics, creating a collection that came to be called “the Cottonian Library.” This article is a manifesto for Cottonian bookbinding to be studied as feminist literary activism. It argues for the importance of looking beyond the book trades to the domestic and unremunerated ways in which women contributed to Romantic period book design, suggesting that the new feminist Craftivism can prompt us to historicize and to acknowledge the significance of Cottonian bookbinding as a practice that cannot be omitted from any history of …

The Revolting Monster - A Consideration Of Existentialist Themes In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Through A Comparison To Albert Camus' The Stranger, Felipe Rodriguez Ii

Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s thesis is concerned with analyzing key themes and ideas in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through an existentialist lens which is made possible through a comparison to themes and ideas in Albert Camus’ The Stranger. I aim to make a contribution to my field by fulfilling a comparison that has long been made since the late 1960s when conversations about British Romanticism and Existentialism were still common. The purpose of my first chapter is to elucidate a new argument about the relationship between these two novels. There is a discernable element of Camusian Revolt exhibited by the Creature in …

The Science Of Art “Faithfully Presented”: Entropy In British Victorian Literature, Hannah Harris

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In the chemical world, entropy, or the randomness and chaos of a system, must continually increase; it is much more favorable for things to fall apart than to be put together. This scientific concept can also be rightly applied to the study of literature. While it is true books contain information put together into some sense of order from chaos, making them counterintuitive to entropy, I am convinced these works must still obey the laws of thermodynamics. There must be an increase in chaos somewhere, and if it is not within the words themselves, it must lie within the ideas …

Review Of Eighteenth-Century Women’S Writing And The Methodist Media Revolution, By Andrew O. Winckles, Rebecca Nesvet

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

The Lodge In The Wilderness: Ecologies Of Contemplation In British Romantic Poetry, Sean M. Nolan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that contemplation is often overlooked in studies of British Romantic poetry. By the late 1700s, changing commercial and agricultural practices, industrialism, secularization, and utilitarianism emphasizing industriousness coalesced to uproot established discourses of selfhood and leisure, and effected crises of individuation in Romantic poetry and poetics. Closely reading poems and writing about poetry composed between the 1780s and 1830s by William Cowper, George Crabbe, Robert Bloomfield, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Stuart Mill, I probe the relationship between aesthetic, ethical, and emotional responses to depictions of toil, idleness, and leisure. I argue that ecologies …

Broken Harts: Mourning The Human/Animal Divide In Shakespeare’S As You Like It And Wordsworth’S “Hart-Leap Well”, Jennifer Jourlait

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis compares the deer scenes in Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Wordsworth’s “Hart-Leap Well.” Both raise questions about man’s right to hunt animals with impunity. Shakespeare’s Jaques superficially takes up the issue of animal rights whereas Wordsworth’s personification of the stag evokes the reader’s sympathy for the animal.

Samuel Daniel’S Lyric Reception: The Role Of Poet-Critics From Wordsworth To Winters, Caleb Mcghee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Elizabethan poet Samuel Daniel was popular in his day, producing lyric, dramatic, and narrative poems. Contemporary anthologies, however, memorialize him primarily as a lyric poet, one that usually gets few entries. My thesis shows how Daniel had a minor reputation as a lyric poet by the 1960’s, despite having high-profile admirers. These well-known poet-critics who engaged with his work are essential to analyzing his lyric reputation: owing to the Romantic emphasis on the lyric, I begin with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s reception of his lyrics in the 19th century. I then analyze the turn of the century …

Sensitive Plants And Senseless Weeds: Plants, Consciousness, And Elizabeth Kent, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

When a team of researchers in 2018 found that plants exposed to anesthesia appeared to lose consciousness, the press reported that plants might have a consciousness to lose. The ensuing debate revealed a gap between scientific and literary approaches to human and nonhuman consciousness that this article traces back to the botanical writing of the Romantic period. These concerns, I argue, are central to Elizabeth Kent’s Flora Domestica (1823) and Sylvan Sketches (1825), both botanical works that double as literary anthologies in order to expose a productive gap between literary and scientific knowledge. In a time when the distinction between …

"The Most Glorious War Recorded In The British Annals”: Portugal In British Figurations Of The Peninsular War, Manuela MourãO

English Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

“THE MOST GLORIOUS WAR RECORDED IN THE BRITISH ANNALS,” AS ROBERT Southey described it in the dedication of his History of the Peninsular War,1 the conflict that brought together Portugal, Spain, and Britain against Napoleon’s armies between 1807 and 1814 was a dominant preoccupation of the British public in general, and of the first generation of Romantics in particular.2 Many critics have shown the extent to which the Iberian uprising against the tyranny of Napoleon galvanized the British people, united the British nation, and afforded Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge a renewed opportunity to sympathize with the cause of …

Elizabeth Kent’S New Tales Of Botanical Friendship, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

Elizabeth Kent has been considered a rather minor figure in the Leigh Hunt circle. However, this examination of her previously unknown children’s tales illuminates how Kent’s generic crossings establish a common emphasis on observation in the realms of botany, pedagogy, and poetry while suggesting that what happens beyond the observable world might be equally generative. Taken as a whole, Kent’s work constitutes a previously unacknowledged challenge to the Cockney School’s almost fetishistic attachment to the social. The identification of New Tales brings into focus Kent’s efforts to systematize friendship through her writing and clarifies her ambiguous response to Cockney amiability.

A World Ruled By Unknowns: The Psychological Effects Of The Supernatural And Natural Worlds In Emily Brontë'S Wuthering Heights, Jordan Cymrot

Student Theses and Dissertations

Emily Brontë (1818-1848) wrote Wuthering Heights in 1847 at a point of collision between Romantic thought and Victorian ideals. Her novel exemplifies a developed and deliberate effort to represent a world ruled by forces out of one’s control, the most evident example of this being the supernatural force that overtakes the novel. In her precise focus on the language and natural landscape that bind this novel together, her characters emerge as representative of the psychological complexity produced by the coexistence of the mundane and the extraordinary. My thesis focuses on the effects of the natural landscape and the forces that …

The Picturesque And Its Decay: The Travel Writing And Journals Of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, And Mary Shelley, Gabrielle Kappes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project puts forth the argument that when the late eighteenth century’s taste for nature and picturesque tourism had peaked, writers following in the picturesque tradition grappled with the limitations and confines of these aesthetic categories. In the chapters that follow, I present three authors, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley, who are all dissatisfied with the conventions of the picturesque. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Alfoxden Journal (1798) demonstrates the nuances of the picturesque instability where distinctions between nature and the cultural production of nature have become muddied. I then examine three tour narratives in order to draw attention to how …

Enclosures And Dichotomies: Coexistence Vs. Distance In The Poems Of John Clare, Jordan P. Finn

Theses and Dissertations

John Clare’s poetry emphasizes an affinity with environment by suspending the distinction between the inside (subject) and the outside (object). Clare’s identification with objects and perception rather than subjects and aesthetics renders his work as a prescient and radical example of ecological poetry in the Romantic period. Raymond Williams’ “green language” and Timothy Morton’s ambient poetics both cite Clare as an ideal figure for their above theories and evoke Clare as a writer who positions the environment as governing thought rather than thought governing the environment. This thesis especially relates Clare to Morton’s Ecology without Nature, a study of …

Deforming Normalcy: Deformity And Disability In William Blake's Art, Seolha Lee

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines William Blake’s verbal and visual art from the perspective that disability is a physical and mental condition that is viewed by society as deviant. Prior to modern conceptions of disability in Britain, the deviation was labeled as “deformity.” This thesis demonstrates various ways in which Blake illustrates deformity, and through this, prefigures the modern sense of disability in his art. I argue that Blake’s representation of deformity in his poetry and drawings is intended to reveal the precariousness of the “normal” human body and inform the reader and viewer that normality is an illusion. The age of …

Ann Yearsley, "Earl Goodwin", And The Politics Of Romantic Discontent, Chris Foss

English & Linguistics Articles

There is a dearth of more substantial critical studies on Ann Yearsley’s tragic drama Earl Goodwin in general, and while the few out there have helpfully illuminated the play’s representation of the historical plight of women and the poor during Anglo-Saxon times, as well as its application to their current predicaments in Romantic-era England and France, they have tended to leave unexplored the ways in which Yearsley simultaneously is clarifying and extending her anger at and frustration with the class- and gender-based discrimination she experienced firsthand in the fallout with her mentor Hannah More over the profits from her first …

On The Fringes: The Monsters, The Voiceless, The Abominations, And The Exiled, Virginia Davis Wyeth

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Peripheral characters/characteristics frequently serve to highlight the problematic societal situation of marginalized groups, even though these characters on the fringes of the text or main characters with unusual attributes are seemingly irrelevant to the primary plot. This portfolio examines, through a teaching unit, the monster archetype and its representation as a means to suppress Other or other within ourselves. The literary analysis pieces also examine the repression of historically marginalized groups, such as women, homosexuals, and children. And the last piece even takes a look at what happens when powerful groups are usurped by socio-economic and cultural shifts.

Review Of The Ladies Of Llangollen: Desire, Indeterminacy, And The Legacies Of Criticism, Dawn M. Goode

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Review of The Ladies of Llangollen: Desire, Indeterminacy, and the Legacies of Criticism. Bucknell UP, 2017. xxxvi + 331pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-6114-8761-9.

Immortality In Literature: The Goddesses Of Ancient Greece, Rebecca Lozier

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The following text explores the connections between the mythology of ancient Greece and the society from which it arose. Women are often at the heart of classical myth despite being oppressed members of society. Understanding the role of women in mythology provides insight into women's treatment in ancient Greece. It follows the lasting influence of ancient Greece and its mythology through to the Romantic Period. Understanding how poets used myth, provides understanding into the culture's beliefs about women.

"A Magic Deeper Still": Sacramental Poetics In William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, And C.S. Lewis, Eric Michael Bontempo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A sacramental poetics requires a particular mode of being-in-the-world. Religiously-minded poets, from Dante and Milton to Donne and Herbert, have long considered how the individual becomes attuned with creation and God’s will. But what happens when modernity and secularization challenge long-held assumptions about the universe and how humankind fits into it? A reevaluation is then needed. My thesis begins with an examination of how William Wordsworth, who sort of falls into modernity, seeks to reoccupy the functions of religion in an increasingly secularized landscape. One consequence of the European Enlightenment is the disentangling and distancing that occurs in regards to …

Romanticism And Christianity, Erin R. Toal

The Kabod

The fervency of Romantic notions sometimes caused the Romantics to stray from Christianity; nonetheless, Romanticism offers many insights that can enhance Christian life and inspire worship of God.

The Complete Poems Of Anne Bannerman, Matthew Heilman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anne Bannerman (c.1780-1829) spent most of her life in Edinburgh, Scotland and published three volumes of poetry in the early nineteenth century. For my dissertation, I have prepared the first fully-annotated critical edition of Bannerman’s complete works, including Poems (1800), Tales of Superstition and Chivalry (1802), and Poems, A New Edition (1807). A comprehensive introduction provides information on Bannerman’s life and background, and examines her work in the context of British Romanticism, the Gothic, Scottish nationalism, and the ballad tradition. Close-readings of the poems examine the ways in which Bannerman’s female narrators challenge early nineteenth-century conceptualizations of gender, particularly in …

Gathering Sense From Song: Robert Browning And The Romantic Epistemology Of Music, Laura Clarke

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.