Blake, Byron, Rossetti, and Wollstonecraft

The Gothic Byron examines in detail the Gothic element in Byron s work, arguing that it has traditionally been undervalued. It looks closely at his reading in the novels of Ann Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, and Charlotte Dacre, and then discusses the Gothic elements in his Turkish Tales, plays, and satirical poetry, ending with two essays on Don Juan. Further essays explore the indebtedness of several European and English writers, including Charlotte and Emily Bronte, to the Gothic element in Byron s poetry."

Introduction -- Our Last Great Age of Heroes -- Part 1. Eighteenth-Century Hero Types -- The Child of Nature -- the Hero of Sensibility: Man of Feeling Or Gloomy Egoist -- The Gothic Villain -- Part 2. Romantic Hero Types -- The Noble Outlaw -- Faust -- Cain and Ahasuerus -- Satan and Prometheus -- Part 3. Byronic Heroes -- Childe Harold -- Four Turkish Tales -- Two Metaphysical Dramas -- The Byronic Hero and Heroic Tradition -- Notes -- Bibliographical Appendix on Hero Types -- Index.
pt. 1. Eighteenth-century hero types -- pt. 2. Romantic hero types -- pt. 3. Byronic heroes.

Taking into account the volume of recent literary criticism of William Blake, this book deals with the complex mixture of visionary Christianity, radical politics and self-generated myth encountered in Blake's major epic poems, The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem, It also discusses the more familiar works, and provides a survey of the full range of Blake's poetry, demonstrating the power and continuing relevance of his poetic voice.

An illustrated study of the social, political and literary thought underlying Blake s Songs and the Prophetic Books, culminating in Milton. It considers the guiding forces behind Visions of the Daughters of Albion and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the"

Developing a perspective on Victorian culture as the breeding ground for early theories of the psyche, this title offers a reading of the Victorian siblings' literature and visual arts. It views poems and artworks such as Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market' and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 'The Blessed Damozel'.

Rossetti: the woman, the poet, and the critics -- Rossetti's response to the feminine voice of woe -- Rossetti and the convent question -- The Christian fairy-tale poems -- The fallen woman poems -- Rossetti's Eve and the woman question -- Daring to speak to others: Rossetti as a religious poet -- Conclusion: secrets.

Christina Rossetti was considered the ideal female poet of her time. Her poetry was devo-tional, moral, and spoke of frustrated affection. Dolores Rosenblum presents a fresh reading of Rossetti's works and places them in the con-text of her life. Rosenblum shows that what was ostensibly devotional, moral, and loveless, was actually what Luce Irigaray calls "mimetism," a subtle parody and subversion of the male tra-dition of literature. Only with the coming of feminist criticism can Rossetti be meaningfully re-evaluated. Rosenblum calls Rossetti's works the "poetry of endurance," stating that it is similar, and at times identical, to the female "sentimental" tradition in literature. Rossetti endured the con-straints of the Victorian female artistic spirit by becoming a "watcher." Within this self-accepted role, Rossetti was able to carefully and deliber-ately choose artistic self-protection. In her reli-gious poetry, Rossetti transcended, by aesthetic renunciation, the alienation and immobilization forced upon her. Rossetti's poetry is full of paradox; it sings about silence, exposes the poet's oblivion. From the repining Victorian poet, there emerged a "stone woman." Rosenblum discusses this pas-sively enduring female figure's alienation from knowledge and power, and how the myth of self strengthened the lyric voice within her. Because she was a woman, she was denied the male use of the lyric "I." Rossetti's work is unified, Rosenblum argues, because she was a deliberate poet, and by accepting the "burden of womanhood," she played out what men only symbolized as female in their art. By her mimicry and revision of the male tradition of literature, Christina Rossetti engaged the patriarchal tradition in ways that make it usable for the female experience, and that provide a critique of male objectification of women in art.

Once viewed solely in relation to the history of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft is now recognized as a writer of formidable talent across a range of genres, including journalism, letters and travel writing, and is increasingly understood as an heir to eighteenth-century literary and political traditions as well as a forebear of romanticism. This Companion is the first collected volume to address all aspects of Wollstonecraft's momentous and tragically brief career. The diverse and searching essays specially commissioned for this volume do justice to Wollstonecraft's pivotal importance in her own time and since, paying attention not only to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but to the full range of her work. A chronology and guides to further reading offer further essential information for scholars and students of this remarkable writer.

The essays included here show that Wollstonecraft's legacy is still with us today as the balancing act between a society where sexual distinction translates into gender prejudice and a utopian order where sexual difference ceases to be a structuring element of social, economic and political bias.