The Late Poetry of the Lake Poets
The Late Poetry of the Lake Poets
The long-established association of Romanticism with youth has resulted in the early poems of the Lake Poets being considered the most significant. Tim Fulford challenges the tendency to overlook the later poetry of no longer youthful poets, which has had the result of neglecting the Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey of the 1820s and leaving unexamined the three poets' rise to popularity in the 1830s and 1840s. He offers a fresh perspective on the Lake Poets as professional writers shaping long careers through new work, as well as the republication of their early successes. The theme of lateness, incorporating revision, recollection, age and loss, is examined within contexts including gender, visual art, and the commercial book market. Fulford investigates the Lake Poets' later poems for their impact now, while also exploring their historical effects in their own time and counting the costs of their omission from Romanticism.
- Provides new perspectives on the often overlooked late work of Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth
- Makes a strong new case for the importance of Southey alongside Wordsworth and Coleridge
- Focuses on the theme of lateness incorporating revision, recollection, age and loss
Reviews & endorsements
"The "Lakeness" of Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth amounted to a revisionary belatedness. This richly researched study shows us how an initially hostile label came to signify something positive about these poets … this study includes many brilliantly resourceful close readings of unfamiliar poems. Fulford's critical style is enlivened by daring coinages that show off his writerly verve and reinternalize the literary as a presence within what he has to say. Not the least virtue of this learned book is not just how much its trenchant re-assessments inform us, but how well it displays the author's relish of and commitment to poetry."
Peter Larkin, Review 19 (www.nbol-19.org)
‘… the book describes not the experience of any given reader but something like the reanimated or reimagined experiences of the authors themselves, which makes it a remarkable act of critical sympathy and engagement.’ Brian Goldberg, Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era
'This richly contextual, deeply researched book is likely to appeal to all those interested in the evolution of the long creative life, and the challenges it presents to traditional categories of literary periodization.' The Times Literary Supplement
Product details
No date availableAdobe eBook Reader
9781107596672
0 pages
0kg
15 b/w illus.
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Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. Southey:
- 1. The Lake Poets and the picturesque view: the visual turn in the late Southey
- 2. Poetic hells and pacific edens: Southey's Tale of Paraguay and Byron's The Island
- Part II. Coleridge:
- 3. Print and performance: Christabel: Kubla Khan, A Vision
- The Pains of Sleep
- 4. The language of love in the late Coleridge: annual verse and collected poetry
- Part III. Wordsworth:
- 5. Naming the abyss: Wordsworth and the sound of power
- 6. Picturing the prehistoric: Wordsworth's sightseeing.
