Romantic Poetry and Literary Coteries The Dialect of the Tribe

How does Romantic poetry read if seen as the product of a coterie of writers, editors, publishers, and critics rather than original lyrics composed by individual geniuses? Romantic Poetry and Literary Coteries explores Romanticism as a discourse characterized by tropes and forms that were jointly produced by literary circles in self-conscious opposition to prevailing social and political values and in deliberate differentiation from the normal practices of contemporary print culture. Considering writing communities such as the Southey/Coleridge circle, the Bloomfield circle, and the Clare circle, Tim Fulford reveals the context in which the composition, publishing and reading of blank-verse effusions, magazine essays, and long-form notebook verse, among others, took place.

Tim Fulford is Professor of English at De Montfort University, UK. His most recent publications include The Late Poetry of the Lake Poets, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey, and Robert Southey: Poetical Works 1811-38. He is currently editing the Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy.

Introduction

PART I: "A SECT OF POETS": THE DIALECT OF FRIENDSHIP IN SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, AND THEIR CIRCLES
1. The Politicization of Allusion in Early Romanticism: Mary Robinson and the Bristol Poets
2. Brothers in Lore: Fraternity and Priority in Thalaba, "Christabel," "Kubla Khan"
3. Signifying Nothing: Coleridge's Visions of 1816 - Anti-Allusion and the Poetic Fragment
4. Positioning The Missionary: Poetic Circles and the Development of Colonial Romance
PART II: THE "RURAL TRIBE": LABORING CLASS POETS AND THE TRADITION
5. The Production of a Poet: Robert Bloomfield, his Patrons, and his Publishers
6. Iamb yet what Iamb: Allusion and Delusion in John Clare's Asylum Poems

PART III: THE LINGO OF LONDONERS: THE "COCKNEY SCHOOL"
7. Romanticism Lite: Talking, Walking and Name Dropping in the Cockney Essay
8. Allusions of Grandeur: Prophetic Authority and the Romantic City