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British Poetry and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Visions of Conflict

Research output: Book/Report/ProceedingsBook

Published
Publication date28/08/2003
PublisherOxford University Press
Number of pages272
ISBN (electronic)9780191718922
ISBN (print)0-19-818758-0, 9780198187585
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This book argues that poetry played a major role in the mediation of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars to the British public, and that the wars had a significant impact on poetic practices and theories in the Romantic period. It examines a wide range of writers, both canonical (Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron) and non-canonical (Smith, Southey, Scott, and Hemans), and locates their work within the huge amount of war poetry published in newspapers and magazines. It shows that poetry was a crucial form through which what were seen as the first modern or 'total' wars were imagined in Britain and that it was central to the cultural and political debates over the conflict with France. While the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars compelled poets to re-examine their roles, it was poetry itself which produced a major transformation of the imagining of war that would be influential throughout the 19th century.

Bibliographic note

RAE_import_type : Authored book RAE_uoa_type : English Language and Literature