Romantic Metropolis: The Urban Scene of British Culture, 1780-1840

Description

This 2005 collection of essays challenges the traditional conception that British Romanticism was rooted in nature and rural life, by showing that much of what was new about Romanticism was born in the city. The essays examine the works and events of the Romantic period from the point of view of the urban world, where rapid developments in population, industry, communication, trade, and technology set the stage and the tone for many of the great achievements in literature and culture. The great metropolis appears as both fact and figure: London is its paradigm, but the metropolitan perspective is also borrowed and projected elsewhere. In this volume, some of the most exciting critics of Romanticism explore diverse cultural productions from poems and paintings, to exhibition sites, panoramas, and political organizations to do long-overdue justice to the place of the city - both as topic and as location - in British Romanticism.

Review of the hardback: 'This cityscape is both importantly represented in, and crucial locus for, Romantic period creativity, and this volume emphasises these facets in a way that has not before been undertaken.' BARS Bulletin and Review Review of the hardback: 'Romantic Metropolis as a whole compels us to re-examine the way our own conception of Romanticism has been invented by excluding everything but what Hazlitt and other 'major' Romantics upheld to forger the image of the 'serious' and solitary Romantic artist. This collection of enlightening essays constitutes a valuable and vitalising contribution to ever-expanding Romantic scholarship.' Studies in English Literature