Napoleon and English Romanticism

by Simon Bainbridge

Overview

Napoleon Bonaparte occupied a central place in the consciousness of many British writers of the Romantic period. In this first full-length study of Romantic writers' obsession with Napoleon, Simon Bainbridge focuses on the writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Byron and Hazlitt. Combining detailed textual analysis with historical and theoretical approaches, and illustrating his argument with contemporary cartoons, Bainbridge shows how Romantic writers constructed and contested different Napoleons as part of their partisan engagement in political and cultural debate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521024129
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/23/2006
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Romanticism , #14
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.71(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction: the poets and the conqueror; 1. A 'conqueror of kings' and a 'deliverer of men': the revolutionary figure of Napoleon in the writing of Coleridge, Southey and Landor; 2. 'In such strength of usurpation': Wordsworth's Napoleonic imagination; 3. 'Historiographer[s] to the King of Hell': The Lake poets' Peninsular campaign; 4. Staging history: Byron and Napoleon, 1813–1814; 5. 'The greatest event of modern times'; 6. 'A proud and full answer': Hazlitt's Napoleonic riposte; Conclusion: The Age of Bronze; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

The book's bold simplicity of focus is balanced by its interest in the complexities of representation, and the result is a study that sheds new light on neglected images and a refocused light on some prominent icons of the Romantic canon. Robert Lapp in European Romantic Review 9:1(Winter 1998)

"...this book will keep its place on a convenient shelf for all intellectually curious students of English romantic poetry." Carl Woodring, Studies in Romanticism

From the Publisher