Romanticism and War

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • J. R. Watson

   Pages 1-22

3. Ways of Seeing War

   • J. R. Watson

   Pages 23-38

4. 1793

   • J. R. Watson

   Pages 39-51

5. 1793 and after

   • J. R. Watson

   Pages 52-67

6. 1795–1802

   • J. R. Watson

   Pages 68-83

7. The Peace of Amiens and after, 1802–05

   • J. R. Watson

   Pages 84-107

8. Poetry and the Army: The War, 1807–08

   • J. R. Watson

   Pages 108-122

9. Cintra and Corunna

   • J. R. Watson

   Pages 123-143

10. The Last Years

    • J. R. Watson

    Pages 144-173

11. Ways of Seeing War: The Poets

    • J. R. Watson

    Pages 174-196

12. Ways of Seeing War: The Soldiers

    • J. R. Watson

    Pages 197-216

13. Afterwords: De Quincey, Ruskin and Hardy

    • J. R. Watson

    Pages 217-229

14. Back Matter

    Pages 230-254

    PDF

This book is a study of war and the perceptions of war. It deals specifically with the British Romantic period writers who lived through the Napoleonic wars, and the way in which those wars affected the writing of Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and many of their contemporaries. Watson discusses the particular fascination of those wars, and the way in which they affected a way of thinking about war that lasted until the early twentieth century.

• Coleridge
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• poetry
• Romanticism
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• twentieth century
• William Wordsworth
• Wordsworth
• British and Irish Literature

'Watson has produced a work that is interesting, engaging and extremely informative. He deals with a complex subject clearly and he powerfully conveys the importance of war in the writing and thinking of those he studies'. - Professor Simon Bainbridge, School of English and Philosophy, Keele University

• University of Durham, UK

  J. R. Watson

J.R. Watson is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Durham. He is author of Wordsworth's Vital Soul, English Poetry of the Romantic Period, 1789-1830, The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and The English Hymn, and the editor of anthologies, most recently An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (2002).

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