Dante and Italy in British Romanticism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   • Frederick Burwick, Paul Douglass

   Pages 1-13

3. Wordsworth’s Italian Encounters

   • Marilyn Gaull

   Pages 15-28

4. Sitting in Dante’s Throne: Wordsworth and Italian Nationalism

   • Bruce Graver

   Pages 29-37

5. Byron Between Ariosto and Tasso

   • Nicholas Halmi

   Pages 39-53

6. Byron and Alfieri

   • Peter Cochran

   Pages 55-61

7. Picturing Byron’s Italy and Italians: Finden’s Illustrations to Byron’s Life and Works

   • Paul Douglass

   Pages 63-75

8. Realms without a Name: Shelley and Italy’s Intenser Day

   • Michael O’Neill

   Pages 77-91

9. Epipsychidion, Dante, and the Renewable Life

   • Stuart Curran

   Pages 93-104

10. The Poetry of Philology: Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy and Mary Shelley’s Valperga

    • Tilottama Rajan

    Pages 105-116

11. Hemans’s Record of Dante: “The Maremma” and the Intertextual Poetics of Plenitude

    • Diego Saglia

    Pages 117-131

12. Germaine de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy (1807) and the Performance of Romanticism(s)

    • Diane Long Hoeveler

    Pages 133-142

13. Coleridge, Sgricci, and the Shows of London: Improvising in Print and Performance

    • Angela Esterhammer

    Pages 143-159

14. Masaniello on the London Stage

    • Frederick Burwick

    Pages 161-182

15. Re-Visioning Rimini: Dante in the Cockney School

    • Jeffrey N. Cox

    Pages 183-203

16. “Syllables of the Sweet South”: The Sound of Italian in the Romantic Period

    • Timothy Webb

    Pages 205-224

17. Back Matter

    Pages 225-258

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From the artistic practice of improvisation to the politics of nationalism, the essays in this volume break new ground and significantly extend our understanding of the relations between British and Italian culture in its analysis of the reception of Dante and Italian literature in British Romanticism.

• English literature
• Italy
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Romanticism
• William Wordsworth
• British and Irish Literature

"This volume, which brings together several of the most authoritative scholars in the field, represents a landmark in the study of Anglo-Italian literary and cultural relations in the Romantic period. It succeeds brilliantly in combining two very different but complementary virtues. On the one hand it revisits, in unexpected and illuminating ways, well-chartered territory such as the Romantic poets reading of Dante, their experience of the Grand Tour, their perception of Italian history and of modern Italy. On the other hand it opens up new areas of cultural investigation reflecting recent approaches to the canons and contexts of British Romanticism: these include the influence of Italian theatre, visual arts, grand opera, improvisational performance, not to mention the Italian language itself, on early nineteenth-century English literature and drama. Challenging new attention is paid to relatively non-canonical authors, among them hitherto little-discussed women writers and illegitimate dramatists. Dante and Italy in British Romanticism throws much-needed light on a crucial period of political and social transformation in Italy, as seen from the critical but sympathetic viewpoint of contemporary British intellectuals, reaffirming the centrality of Dante s role in the formation and interpretation of Italy s late and contradictory identity as a nation." - Lilla Maria Crisafulli, University of Bologna

FREDERICK BURWICK is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
 
PAUL DOUGLASS is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University, California, USA.