Politics, philosophy, and the production of romantic texts

Terence Allan Hoagwood

Works by authors of the Romantic period have often been viewed primarily as expressions of escapism, disillusionment, or apostasy on the part of the writer. In contrast, Hoagwood shows that political repression had important effects on the production of Romantic texts. Far from disengaging from the political world, works by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley, Hays, and Smith, written at a time when overt expression was dangerous, express their author's contentions with political repression through duplicitous meaning and figural terminology. By emphasizing the material textuality of Romantic writing, Hoagwood provides a new model for interpretation in the tradition of countering "Romantic ideology." . Hoagwood demonstrates how political pressures and the institutions of publishing helped to shape the meanings of Romantic texts. He argues for the importance of a book's...

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