Blackwell Reference Online

The Companion to Romanticism is a major introductory survey by an international collection of scholars, whose 52 specially commssioned contributions are aimed specifically at a student readership.

Divided into four parts - Contexts and Perspectives 1790–01830; Readings; Genres and Modes; and Issues and Debates - the Companion provides students new to the subject with a vital orientation and foundation for study, and also offers senior and graduate students an important focus upon new developments and possible future directions.

The following topics and subjects are covered: ‘Romanticism: The Brief History of a Concept’, ‘Preromanticism’, ‘From Revolution to Romanticism’, ‘Beyond the Enlightenment’, ‘Britain at War: The Historical Context’, ‘Literature and Religion’, ‘The Picturesque, the Beautiful and the Sublime’, ‘The Romantic Reader’, ‘The Romantic Drama’, ‘The Novel’, ‘Gothic Fiction’, ‘Parody and Imitation’, ‘Travel Writing’, ‘Romantic Literary Criticism’, ‘Romanticism and Gender’, ‘Romanticism and Feminism’, ‘New Historicism’, ‘Romantic Ecology’, ‘Psychological Approaches’, ‘Dialogic Approaches’, ‘The Romantic Fragment’, ‘Performative Language and Speech-act Theory’, ‘Slavery and Romantic Writing’, ‘Apocalypse and Millennium’, ‘The Romantic Imagination’, ‘England and Germany’, ‘Romantic Responses to Science’, ‘Shakespeare and the Romantics’, ‘Milton and the Romantics’.

In addition there are 22 readings of canonical and postcanonical texts, from Wordsworth's Prelude (by Jonathan Wordsworth) to Joanna Baillie's A Series of Plays (by Janice Patten) and Felicia Hemans's Records of Woman (by Adam Roberts); From Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (by David Bromwich) to Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar (by John Lucas) and Byron's Don Juan (by Jane Stabler); from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals (by Pamela Woof) to William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience (by Nelson Hilton) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (by John Beer).