Nineteenth century medievalism is usually associated with Scott's world of Ivanhoe , but Romantic Medievalism argues that Scott's is a conservative use of the past and that radical poets such as the young Coleridge, Keats and Shelley used the medieval to critique and change, rather than validate, the present. These poets identified with the troubadour of courtly love, a disempowered figure often politically at odds with the establishment figure of the knight.

Keywords

Coleridge
John Keats
Middle Ages
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Romanticism
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
William Wordsworth
British and Irish Literature

About the author

ELIZABETH FAY teaches Romantic Period Literature at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her publications include Becoming Wordsworthian: A Performative Aesthetics and Feminist Introduction to Romanticism.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Romantic Medievalism
Book Subtitle: History and the Romantic Literary Ideal
Authors: Elizabeth Fay
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403913616
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2002
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-333-97007-2Published: 17 December 2001
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4039-1361-6Published: 17 December 2001
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: V, 233
Topics: Classical and Antique Literature, Nineteenth-Century Literature, British and Irish Literature

Authors:

Sections

Buy it now

Buying options

Other ways to access

Table of contents (5 chapters)

Front Matter

Romantic Medievalism: The Ideal of History

Cultivating Medievalism: Feeling History

The Legacy of Arthur: Scott, Wordsworth and Byron

Keats and the Time of Romance

The Shelleys on Love

Back Matter

About this book