Dissolution of character in late Romanticism, 1820-1839 / Jonas Cope.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cope, Jonas, author.

Series:

Edinburgh critical studies in romanticism

Edinburgh critical studies in Romanticism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Romanticism--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Romanticism.

Romanticism--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Character in literature.

History.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

240 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2018]

Summary:

The idea of character that many of us still take for granted - whether considered in print as an object of representation, or in life as a congenital 'bias' or an acquirable moral possession - is the shared concern of a multidisciplinary debate in reform-era Britain. This book argues for the independent merits of several lesser-known works written in England and Scotland during the 1820s and 1830s, recovering in these works a sustained ideological engagement with the ever-slippery concept of character. The Dissolution of Character in Late Romanticism studies texts written by contemporary poets, novelists, essayists, journalists, philosophers, phrenologists, sociologists, gossip-mongers and anonymous correspondents. Its main authors of interest include David Hume, Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Hartley Coleridge, Letitia London, Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Lovell Beddoes. With a fresh, interdisciplinary approach, this original intervention in Romantic-era scholarship throws character into relief as an especially problematic concept, not only for the poststructuralist critics who study late Romantic writers, but also for the writers themselves. It changes the ways in which literary scholarship has thought about the development of character discourse in the first half of the nineteenth century. Book jacket.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-230) and index.

Other Format:

Electronic version: 97814744521317

ISBN:

147442130X

9781474421300

OCLC:

1012811295