Landscape, liberty, and authority
Subtitle: poetry, criticism, and politics from Thomson to Wordsworth
By: Tim Fulford.
Series: Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ;; 30
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 251
Subjects: English poetry -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Landscape in literature; Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Political poetry, English -- History and criticism; Description (Rhetoric) -- History -- 18th century; Picturesque, The, in literature; Authority in literature; Liberty in literature
Description: Counter Eighteenth-century landscape description formed part of a larger debate over the nature of liberty and authority which was vital to a Britain newly defining its nationhood in a period of growing imperial power and rapid economic change. Tim Fulford examines landscape description in the writings of Thomson, Cowper, Johnson, Gilpin, Repton, Wordsworth, Coleridge and others, revealing tensions that arose as writers struggled for authority over the public sphere and sought to redefine the nature of that authority. In his investigation of poetry and political and aesthetic writing, Dr Fulford throws new light on the legacy of Commonwealth and Country-party ideas of liberty. Also discussed are the significance of the Miltonic sublime, the politics of the picturesque and the post-colonial encounter of the Scottish tour. Dr Fulford goes on to show how the early radicalism and later conservatism of Wordsworth and Coleridge were shaped, in part, by eighteenth-century literary political and literary authorities. His innovative study offers an understanding of literary and political influence that cuts across conventional periodisation, finding new links between the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.