Georgic Modernity and British Romanticism

Poetry and the Mediation of History

Kevis Goodman author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:1st Mar '08

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Georgic Modernity and British Romanticism cover

Goodman traces connections between Georgic verse and developments in other spheres from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries.

This book traces connections between Georgic verse and developments in other spheres from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries: the mediation of perception by scientific instruments, of events by newspapers, of knowledge by the feelings, of the past by narrative. Kevis Goodman argues that because of the Georgic's concern for the transmission of knowledge and the extension of the senses over time and space, the verse of this period, far from burying history in nature (a position more often associated with Romanticism), instead presents new ways of perceiving history in terms of sensation. In this way Goodman opens up the subject of Georgic to larger areas of literary and cultural study including the history of the feelings and the prehistory of modern media concerns in relation to print culture and early scientific technology.

'It would be difficult, to my mind, to exaggerate the importance of this argument and the book it concludes. By tracing the history of georgic under-presence in eighteenth-century poetry, Georgic Modernity and British Romanticism resituates history within literature and finally builds a compelling case for the re-legitimation of Romantic temporality. Kevis Goodman outlines here a genuine history that can live in poetry, and she does so without either denying the value of ideological critique or compromising on the painfulness of historical experience. This work delivers an important qualification to historicism, one that should unsettle some of the assumptions that guide contemporary criticism.' Wordsworth Circle
'Highly recommended.' Choice

ISBN: 9780521057295

Dimensions: 228mm x 152mm x 14mm

Weight: 382g

248 pages