Romantic Responses to Revolution through Miltonic Ideas of the Fall: (Routledge Focus on Literature)

Romantic Responses to Revolution through Miltonic Ideas of the Fall explores the influence of John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, on a range of Romantic and post-Romantic writers. Specifically, the book examines the way in which these writers use the Fall, and the notion of ‘fallenness’—as envisioned in Paradise Lost—as a model for writing about their roles as poets/writers in periods of political and cultural turmoil. This book will be of value to undergraduate and postgraduate students of English Literature with a specific interest in the Romantics. The writers and texts featured—including the ‘big six’ of Romantic poets, and three canonical novels of the early nineteenth century—are very widely studied on English Literature courses across the UK, US, and Europe. This makes the book an ideal reference text or inspiration point for essays, coursework, and theses, while the concise and accessible style should be especially appealing for undergraduates and lecturers looking for an approachable overview of Romantic responses to revolution and the influence of Milton.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I. Romantic Poets’ Responses to Miltonic Ideas of the Fall Chapter 1. First-Generation Romantics: Revolutionary Responses to Miltonic Ideas of the Fall 1.1. William Blake: Poetry as Rebellion — Reconciling Blake and Milton 1.2. Coleridge: Retrospective Conservatism and the Intervening Voice 1.3. Wordsworth: ‘Two Consciousnesses’ and The Consummation of the Poet’s Mind Chapter 2. Byron and Keats: Intergenerational Conflict and Rising from the Fall 2.1. Byron: ‘being/ Yourselves in your resistance’: The Value of Ideological Integrity in Cain 2.2. Keats: The Necessary Transition to a New Poetic Order Part II. Writing from the Literary ‘Lacuna’: Divided Voices and Divided Sympathies Chapter 3. Frankenstein and Mary Shelley’s Radical Scepticism Chapter 4. ‘Neither Whig, Tory, Radical, nor Destructionist’: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and the ‘Polydoxy’ of James Hogg Chapter 5. Wuthering Heights: ‘As Different as a Moonbeam from Lightning’ — Reconciling Romanticism and Victorianism Conclusion

About the Author :
Callum Fraser currently works as a commissioning editor at CRC Press/ Taylor & Francis. He received a PhD from Newcastle University in 2018 for research on the influence of Milton on the Romantics, as well as a related creative project. He maintains his interest in this literary period and is currently working on a Gothic novel set in rural Cumberland in 1824.