The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and Race

An accessible guide showing how Romantic engagements with radicalism, society, and 'powerful feeling' were de facto engagements with race.

This classroom-ready Companion brings together diverse specialists to discuss how Romantic-era thinkers engaged with race in sometimes explicit and sometimes less obvious ways. Combining academic rigor with accessibility, the contributors present non-specialists with a rich picture of this key moment in the literary and cultural history of race.Amidst the popularization of race science and rapid colonial expansion that characterized the Romantic era, newly urgent discussions about the morality and legality of slavery emerged that would pave the way for formal abolition. The thirteen essays collected here make clear that these developments thoroughly informed Romantic-era literature: the very terms that have long defined Romanticism – revolution and radicalism, poetry and “powerful feeling,” the solitary self and the social world – were shaped by a changing global order in which race figured centrally. Combining academic rigor with accessibility, this diverse group of scholars presents specialists and non-specialists alike with a rich picture of this key moment in the literary and cultural history of race. Engaging with the distinctly Romantic meanings of race, chapters invite readers to consider how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideas about difference continue to shape the modern world.