Presences That Disturb: Models of Romantic Identity in the Literature and Culture of the 1790s
(Hardback)
Publishing Details
Presences That Disturb: Models of Romantic Identity in the Literature and Culture of the 1790s
By (Author) Damian Walford Davies
University of Wales Press
University of Wales Press
23rd October 2002
United Kingdom
Classifications
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
820.9145
Physical Properties
Hardback
384
Width 138mm, Height 216mm
717g
Description
Presences that Disturb examines the historical and cultural contexts that determined the Romantic self in a revolutionary decade. It explores the ways in which canonical writers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats, and significant political figures such as John Thelwall imaginatively identified with certain emblematic presences - from the Dark-Age hermit-king Tewdrig to the Polish patriot-General Kosciusko and the Welsh jacobin bard Edward Williams - as instructive models and haunting second selves. Addressing recent new historicist critiques, this highly original analysis of Romantic identity discusses both the subtle ways in which these crucial but neglected presences inhabit literary texts and their broader cultural impact. Damian Walford Davies offers a wholly new perspective on Romanticism by rehistoricising canonical works in relation to marginalised Welsh figures, narratives and locations. Wales and the ideologically-troubling space of the Wye Valley are revealed as sites in which Romanticism came to terms with history. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, Presences that Disturb also enhances our understanding of how a number of cultural voices and discourses, from antiquarianism and Bardism to topographical description, county history and the tour, determined the shape of canonical Romanticism.
Reviews
' ... strategic and comprehensive in scope ... a welcome contribution in an importantly different direction.' (English) '... brilliantly succeeds in re-placing the reader in the radical writing community of Woodsworth, Coleridge, Thelwall, David Williams and Iolo Morganwg ...' (Coleridge Bulletin) ' ... strategic and comprehensive in scope... Walford Davies's book is a welcome contribution in an importantly different direction... ' (English )
Author Bio
Damian Walford Davies is lecturer in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the editor of William Wordsworth: Selected Poems (1994) and has written widely on Romantic authors and twentieth-century Welsh writing in both English and Welsh. His forthcoming books include an edition of Waldo Williams' prose, William Wordsworth: The Prelude: A critical Edition and an edition of The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
