Living forms
Subtitle: Romantics and the monumental figure
By: Bruce Haley.
Series: SUNY series, studies in the long nineteenth century
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
Subjects: English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Art and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Literature and history -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Architecture and literature -- History -- 19th century.; Romanticism -- Great Britain.; Monuments in literature.; Sculpture in literature.; Statues in literature.
Description: "Based on years of archival research in various British and American libraries, Living Forms examines the early nineteenth century's fascination with representations of the human form, particularly those from the past, which, having no adequate verbal explanatory text, are vulnerable to having their meanings erased by time.

The author explores a variety of such representations and responses to them, including Coleridge's Shakespeare lectures, Hazlitt's essays on portraits, Keats's poems on mythic and sculpted figures, meditations by Byron's Childe Harold on the monuments of Italy, Felicia Hemans's verses on monuments to and by women, and Shelley's poems and letters on figures from Italy, Egypt, and other antique lands.

Haley argues that in what has been called the "museum age," Romantics sought aesthetically to frame these figures as "living forms," mental images capable of realization in alternate modes or forms."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-291) and index.