Watchwords : Romanticism and the poetics of attention /
Gurton-Wachter, Lily, 1980-
Watchwords : Romanticism and the poetics of attention / Lily Gurton-Wachter. - Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, (c)2016. - 1 online resource
Includes bibliographies and index.
Introduction : attention's disciplines -- Reading, a double attention -- The poetics of alarm and the passion of listening -- Bent earthwards : Wordsworth's poetics of the interval -- "That something living is abroad" : missing the point in Beachy Head -- Attention's aches in Keats's Hyperion poems -- Afterword : just looking.
This book revisits British Romanticism as a poetics of heightened attention. At the turn of the nineteenth century, as Britain was on the alert for a possible French invasion, attention became a phenomenon of widespread interest, one that aligned and distinguished an unusual range of fields (including medicine, aesthetics, theology, ethics, pedagogy, and politics). Within this wartime context, the Romantic aesthetic tradition appears as a response to a crisis in attention caused by demands on both soldiers and civilians to keep watch. Close formal readings of the poetry of Blake, Coleridge, Cowper, Keats, (Charlotte) Smith, and Wordsworth, in conversation with research into Enlightenment philosophy and political and military discourses, suggest the variety of forces competing for--or commanding--attention in the period. This new framework for interpreting Romanticism and its legacy illuminates what turns out to be an ongoing tradition of war literature that, rather than give testimony to or represent warfare, uses rhythm and verse to experiment with how and what we attend to during times of war.--Publisher website.
9780804798761
2015034983
English poetry--History and criticism.--19th century
Authors and readers--History--Great Britain--19th century.
Attention--History--Great Britain--19th century.
Romanticism--Great Britain.
Poetics.
Literature--Philosophy.
Electronic Books.
PR590 / .W383 2016
Watchwords : Romanticism and the poetics of attention / Lily Gurton-Wachter. - Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, (c)2016. - 1 online resource
Includes bibliographies and index.
Introduction : attention's disciplines -- Reading, a double attention -- The poetics of alarm and the passion of listening -- Bent earthwards : Wordsworth's poetics of the interval -- "That something living is abroad" : missing the point in Beachy Head -- Attention's aches in Keats's Hyperion poems -- Afterword : just looking.
This book revisits British Romanticism as a poetics of heightened attention. At the turn of the nineteenth century, as Britain was on the alert for a possible French invasion, attention became a phenomenon of widespread interest, one that aligned and distinguished an unusual range of fields (including medicine, aesthetics, theology, ethics, pedagogy, and politics). Within this wartime context, the Romantic aesthetic tradition appears as a response to a crisis in attention caused by demands on both soldiers and civilians to keep watch. Close formal readings of the poetry of Blake, Coleridge, Cowper, Keats, (Charlotte) Smith, and Wordsworth, in conversation with research into Enlightenment philosophy and political and military discourses, suggest the variety of forces competing for--or commanding--attention in the period. This new framework for interpreting Romanticism and its legacy illuminates what turns out to be an ongoing tradition of war literature that, rather than give testimony to or represent warfare, uses rhythm and verse to experiment with how and what we attend to during times of war.--Publisher website.
9780804798761
2015034983
English poetry--History and criticism.--19th century
Authors and readers--History--Great Britain--19th century.
Attention--History--Great Britain--19th century.
Romanticism--Great Britain.
Poetics.
Literature--Philosophy.
Electronic Books.
PR590 / .W383 2016