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Overview
Waiting for the millennium was a major feature of British society at the endof the 18th century. But how exactly did this preoccupation shape—and how was it shaped by—the literature, art, and politics of the period we now call Romantic? These essays investigate a series of millenarians both famous and forgotten, from Coleridge to Cowper, Blake to Byron; and explore the artistic and political subcultures of radical London; the religious sects surrounding Richard Brothers and Joanna Southcott, and the poetics of feminism and Orientalism. Romanticism and Millenarianism presents an expanded and rehistoricized canon of writers and artists who shaped key debates about revolution, empire, gender, and sexuality.Synopsis
Following in the steps of Morton D. Paley's Energy and the Imagination: A Study of the Development of Blake's Thought (1970) and following works, these 14 essays, presented by Fulford (English, Nottingham Trent U., UK), study the overlapping cultures of literature, art, and religion as they manifested in the works of such writers as William Cowper, Samuel Coleridge, Robert Southey, Robert Hawes, Lord Byron, and of course William Blake. Specific discussions include the effect of the French Revolution on the Miltonic verse with which Coleridge and Blake prophesied forthcoming apocalypse, the rejection of millenarianism by women Romantic writers, and late development of Blake's work as a culmination of his visionary re- orientation of existing religious art. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)