The qualities and achievements of eighteenth century English literature have suffered denigration as a result of a prevailing Whig interpretation of literary history. It is the contention of this book, originally published in 1986, that an alternative form of Whig interpretation is possible and even desirable. It has as its sphere of interest the ways in which views on the nature and benefits of political freedom, and various "whiggish" readings of literary history, political theory and aesthetics, did in fact shape literary and social changes through the eighteenth century. Many characteristic Romantic tenets can be seen as springing, not fully formed from the heads of their creators, but directly out of the aesthetic concerns focusing around Longinus, and the recognition of the historically singular nature of the British constitution. This book studies and analyses the forms such concerns took in several of the central thinkers and writers of the period, and is an important contribution to the understanding of the eighteenth century milieu.

A COMPANION TO & EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY A COMPANION TO & EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY Edited by Christine Gerrard This wide-ranging Companion reflects the dramatic transformation that has taken place in the study of eighteenth-century poetry over the past two decades. New essays by leading scholars in the field address an expanded poetic canon that now incorporates verse by many women poets and other formerly marginalized poetic voices. The volume engages with topical critical debates such as the production and consumption of literary texts, the constructions of femininity, sentiment and sensibility, enthusiasm, politics and aesthetics, and the growth of imperialism. The Companion opens with a section on contexts, considering eighteenth-century poetry’s relationships with such topics as party politics, religion, science, the visual arts, and the literary marketplace. A series of close readings of specific poems follows, ranging from familiar texts such as Pope’s The Rape of the Lock to slightly less well-known works such as Swift’s “Stella” poems and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Town Eclogues. Essays on forms and genres, and a series of more provocative contributions on significant themes and debates, complete the volume. The Companion gives readers a thorough grounding in both the background and the substance of eighteenth-century poetry, and is designed to be used alongside David Fairer and Christine Gerrard’s Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (3rd edition, 2014).

The poetry of the mid- and late-eighteenth century has long been regarded as primarily private and apolitical; in this wide-ranging study Dustin Griffin argues that in fact the poets of the period were addressing the great issues of national life--rebellion at home, imperial wars abroad, an expanding commercial empire, an emerging new British national identity. Taking up the topic of patriotic verse, Griffin shows that poets such as Thomas Gray, Christopher Smart, Oliver Goldsmith, and William Cowper were engaged in the century-long debate about the nature of true patriotism.

In recent years the canon of eighteenth-century poetry has greatly expanded to include women poets, labouring-class and provincial poets, and many previously unheard voices. Fairer’s book takes up the challenge this ought to pose to our traditional understanding of the subject. This book seeks to question some of the structures, categories, and labels that have given the age its reassuring shape in literary history. In doing so Fairer offers a fresh and detailed look at a wide range of material.

This volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The wide scope of the collection, juxtaposing canonical authors with those now gaining new attention from scholars, makes it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism.

This book looks at the aristocratic adoption of Roman ideals in eighteenth-century English culture.

This scholarly study presents a new political Wordsworth: an artist interested in 'autonomous' poetry's redistribution of affect. No slave of Whig ideology, Wordsworth explores emotion for its generation of human experience and meaning. He renders poetry a critical instrument that, through acute feeling, can evaluate public and private life.