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Cover image of Romantic Narrative
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Romantic Narrative

Shelley, Hays, Godwin, Wollstonecraft

Tilottama Rajan

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Often identified with its lyric poetry, Romanticism has come to be dismissed by historicists as an ineffectual idealism. By focusing on Romantic narrative, noted humanist Tilottama Rajan takes issue with this identification, as well as with the equation of narrative itself with the governmental apparatus of the Novel. Exploring the role of narrativity in the works of Romantic writers, Rajan also reflects on larger disciplinary issues such as the role of poetry versus prose in an emergent modernity and the place of Romanticism itself in a Victorianized nineteenth century.

While engaging both...

Often identified with its lyric poetry, Romanticism has come to be dismissed by historicists as an ineffectual idealism. By focusing on Romantic narrative, noted humanist Tilottama Rajan takes issue with this identification, as well as with the equation of narrative itself with the governmental apparatus of the Novel. Exploring the role of narrativity in the works of Romantic writers, Rajan also reflects on larger disciplinary issues such as the role of poetry versus prose in an emergent modernity and the place of Romanticism itself in a Victorianized nineteenth century.

While engaging both genres, Romantic Narrative responds to the current critical shift from poetry to prose by concentrating, paradoxically, on a poetics of narrative in Romantic prose fiction. Rajan argues that poiesis, as a mode of thinking, is Romanticism’s legacy to an age of prose. She elucidates this thesis through careful readings of Shelley’s Alastor and his Gothic novels, Godwin’s Caleb Williams and St. Leon, Hays’ Memoirs of Emma Courtney, and Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman.

Rajan, winner of the Keats-Shelley Association's Distinguished Lifetime Award and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is one of Romanticism’s leading scholars. Effective, articulate, and readable, Romantic Narrative will appeal to scholars in both nineteenth-century studies and narrative theory.

Reviews

Reviews

With philosophical sophistication and extraordinary critical intelligence, Rajan also presents complex and original readings.

Innovative.

This is first-rate, indeed exemplary work, polished and elegant in conception, unfailingly cogent in execution, meticulously researched, and presented in impressively readable diction.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
312
ISBN
9780801897214
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
List of Abbreviations
1. The Trauma of Lyric: Shelley's Missed Encounter with Poetry in Alastos
2. Shelley's Promethean Narratives: Gothic Anamorphoses in Zastrozzi, St

Acknowledgments
Introduction
List of Abbreviations
1. The Trauma of Lyric: Shelley's Missed Encounter with Poetry in Alastos
2. Shelley's Promethean Narratives: Gothic Anamorphoses in Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne, and Prometheus Unbound
3. Unbinding the Personal: Autonarration, Epistolarity, and Genotext in Mary Hays's Memoirs of Emma Courtney
4. The Scene of Judgment: Trial and Confession in Godwin's Caleb Williams and Other Fiction
5. Gambling, Alchemy, Speculation: Godwin's Critique of Pure Reason in St. Leon
6. Whose Text? Godwin's Editing of Mary Wollstonecraft's The Wrongs of Woman
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Author Bio
Tilottama Rajan
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Tilottama Rajan

Tilottama Rajan is Distinguished University Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Western Ontario, where she was also previously Director of the Centre for Theory and Criticism. She is the author of several books, including, most recently, Deconstruction and the Remainders of Phenomenology: Sartre, Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard.