Angol
This is a collection of eight specially-commissioned essays focusing on the relations between British Romantic culture (poetry, fiction, painting, and non-fictional prose) and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The book takes, as its central thesis, the idea that Romanticism is facilitated and conditioned by a culture of hostility. Whether this is manifested in Blakean visions of "mental warfare", or in socio-historical reflections on the links between conflict and nationhood, the essays in this volume seek to correct a prevailing assumption that the culture of this period is unaffected by discourses of violence. Through a combination of individual case studies - detailed readings of warfare in Coleridge, Byron, Charlotte Smith and Austen - and wider-ranging survey discussions, including essays on the representation of the British sailor and war poetry by women, the collection offers a reflection on the texts and contexts of the first "Great War".
