This book offers an exciting reassessment of Keats with particular emphasis on gender identity and sexuality. Traditionally, Keats has been more readily associated with the 'feminine' than any other canonical male English poet. This feminization was always likely, given his tragically early death and the mythologizing which took place soon after. In contrast, John Whale explores Keats's writings from the perspective of masculinity and gender by placing them in the context of contemporary friendship groupings and coterie relationships. Whale addresses all the major poems and gives due prominence to the letters. In so doing, he offers a new understanding of Keats's exploration of poetry, gender and desire, and provides an extended analysis of Keats's quest for poetic fame in the face of the often conflicting forces of love and sexuality. Clear, concise and insightful, this is an essential guide to one of the best-known Romantic poets.

This ambitious study, first published in 2000, offers a radical reassessment of one of the most important concepts of the Romantic period - the imagination. In contrast to traditional accounts, John Whale locates the Romantic imagination within the period's lively and often antagonistic polemics on aesthetics and politics. In particular he focuses on the different versions of imagination produced within British writing in response to the cultural crises of the French Revolution and the ideology of utilitarianism. Through detailed analysis of key texts by Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Hazlitt, Cobbett and Coleridge, Imagination under Pressure seeks to restore the role of imagination as a more positive force within cultural critique. The book concludes with a chapter on the afterlife of the Coleridgean imagination in the work of John Stuart Mill and I. A. Richards. As a whole it represents a timely and inventive contribution to the ongoing redefinition of Romantic literary and political culture.

First published in 1992. Beyond Romanticism represents a substantial challenge to traditional views of the Romantic period and provides a sustained critique of 'Romantic ideology'. The debates with which it engages had previously been under-represented in the study of Romanticism, where the claims of history had never had quite the same status as they have had in other periods, and where confidence in poetic literary value remains high. Individual essays examine the philosophical underpinnings of Romantic discourse; they survey analogous and competing discourses of the period such as mesmerism, Hellenism, orientalism and nationalism; and analyse both the manifestations of Romanticism in particular historical and textual moments, and the texts and modes of writing which have been historically marginalized or silenced by 'the Romantic'. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

First published in 1992. Beyond Romanticism represents a substantial challenge to traditional views of the Romantic period and provides a sustained critique of 'Romantic ideology'. The debates with which it engages had previously been under-represented in the study of Romanticism, where the claims of history had never had quite the same status as they have had in other periods, and where confidence in poetic literary value remains high. Individual essays examine the philosophical underpinnings of Romantic discourse; they survey analogous and competing discourses of the period such as mesmerism, Hellenism, orientalism and nationalism; and analyse both the manifestations of Romanticism in particular historical and textual moments, and the texts and modes of writing which have been historically marginalized or silenced by 'the Romantic'. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

First published in 1790 Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France initiated a debate not only about the nature of the unprecedented historical events taking place across the channel, but about the very identity of the British state and its people. It has subsequently been appropriated by a variety of conservative and liberal thinkers and has played a major role in our understanding of the relationship between rhetoric, aesthetics and politics. In this volume, leading Burke scholars offer new and challenging essays which allow us to reconsider the historical context in which Reflections on the Revolution in France was written. The essays consider its reception, its engagements in the discourses of nationalism and toleration, its legacy to English and Irish writers of the Romantic period and its impact within our contemporary cultural and critical theory. The volume demonstrates a range of interdisciplinary critical methods and cultural perspectives from which to read Burke's most famous work. This volume will be the ideal companion to Burke's Reflections for all students of literature, history, politics and Irish studies. -- .

This ambitious study, first published in 2000, offers a radical reassessment of one of the most important concepts of the Romantic period - the imagination. In contrast to traditional accounts, John Whale locates the Romantic imagination within the period's lively and often antagonistic polemics on aesthetics and politics. In particular he focuses on the different versions of imagination produced within British writing in response to the cultural crises of the French Revolution and the ideology of utilitarianism. Through detailed analysis of key texts by Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Hazlitt, Cobbett and Coleridge, Imagination under Pressure seeks to restore the role of imagination as a more positive force within cultural critique. The book concludes with a chapter on the afterlife of the Coleridgean imagination in the work of John Stuart Mill and I. A. Richards. As a whole it represents a timely and inventive contribution to the ongoing redefinition of Romantic literary and political culture.