Romanticism and Popular Magic
Romanticism and Popular Magic

Author: Stephanie Elizabeth Churms

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-01-16

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 3030048101

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This book explores how Romanticism was shaped by practices of popular magic. It seeks to identify the place of occult activity and culture – in the form of curses, spells, future-telling, charms and protective talismans – in everyday life, together with the ways in which such practice figures, and is refigured, in literary and political discourse at a time of revolutionary upheaval. What emerges is a new perspective on literature’s material contexts in the 1790s – from the rhetorical, linguistic and visual jugglery of the revolution controversy, to John Thelwall’s occult turn during a period of autobiographical self-reinvention at the end of the decade. From Wordsworth’s deployment of popular magic as a socially and politically emancipatory agent in Lyrical Ballads, to Coleridge’s anxious engagement with superstition as a despotic system of ‘mental enslavement’, and Robert Southey’s wrestling with an (increasingly alluring) conservatism he associated with a reliance on ultimately incarcerating systems of superstition.

English Magic and Imperial Madness
English Magic and Imperial Madness

Author: Peter D. Mathews

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2021-11-09

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1476644942

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Regency England was a pivotal time of political uncertainty, with a changing monarchy, the Napoleonic Wars, and a population explosion in London. In Susanna Clarke's fantasy novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the era is also witness to the unexpected return of magic. Locating the consequences of this eruption of magical unreason within the context of England's imperial history, this study examines Merlin and his legacy, the roles of magicians throughout history, the mythology of disenchantment, the racism at work in the character of Stephen Black, the meaning behind the fantasy of magic's return, and the Englishness of English magic itself. Looking at the larger historical context of magic and its links to colonialism, the book offers both a fuller understanding of the ethical visions underlying Clarke's groundbreaking novel of madness intertwined with magic, while challenging readers to rethink connections among national identity, rationality, and power.

Representing Magic in Modern Ireland
Representing Magic in Modern Ireland

Author: Andrew Sneddon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-05-19

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1108957501

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This Element argues that Ireland did not experience a disenchanted modernity, nor a decline in magic. It suggests that beliefs, practices and traditions concerning witchcraft and magic developed and adapted to modernity to retain cultural currency until the end of the twentieth century. This analysis provides the backdrop for the first systematic exploration of how historic Irish trials of witches and cunning-folk were represented by historians, antiquarians, journalists, dramatists, poets, and novelists in Ireland between the late eighteenth and late twentieth century. It is demonstrated that this work created an accepted narrative of Irish witchcraft and magic which glossed over, ignored, or obscured the depth of belief in witchcraft, both in the past and in contemporary society. Collectively, their work gendered Irish witchcraft, created a myth of a disenchanted, modern Ireland, and reinforced competing views of Irishness and Irish identity. These long-held stereotypes were only challenged in the late twentieth-century.

William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism
William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism

Author: Paul Cheshire

Publisher: Romantic Reconfigurations Stud

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1786941201

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This first annotated edition of William Gilbert's enigmatic poem, The Hurricane: a Theosophical and Western Eclogue, with extended interpretative chapters informed by Gilbert's magical and astrological writings, shows how its dark materials fed the imaginations of his friends Coleridge, Wordsworth and Southey, in their formative years between 1795 and 1798.

Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Enlightenment
Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Enlightenment

Author: Michael R. Lynn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-17

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1000557456

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Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Enlightenment argues for the centrality of magical practices and ideas throughout the long eighteenth century. Although the hunt for witches in Europe declined precipitously after 1650, and the intellectual justification for natural magic came under fire by 1700, belief in magic among the general population did not come to a sudden stop. The philosophes continued to take aim at magical practices, alongside religion, as examples of superstitions that an enlightened age needed to put behind them. In addition to a continuity of beliefs and practices, the eighteenth century also saw improvement and innovation in magical ideas, the understanding of ghosts, and attitudes toward witchcraft. The volume takes a broad geographical approach and includes essays focusing on Great Britain (England and Ireland), France, Germany, and Hungary. It also takes a wide approach to the subject and includes essays on astrology, alchemy, witchcraft, cunning folk, ghosts, treasure hunters, and purveyors of magic. With a broad chronological scope that ranges from the end of the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, this volume is useful for undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars, and those with a general interest in magic, witchcraft, and spirits in the Enlightenment.

English Fiction of the Romantic Period 1789-1830
English Fiction of the Romantic Period 1789-1830

Author: Gary Kelly

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1134960840

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English Fiction of the Romantic Period 1789-1830 is the first comprehensive historical survey of fiction from that period for many decades. It combines a clear awareness of the period's social history with recent developments in literary criticism, theory and history, and explains the astounding variety of forms in Romantic fiction in terms of the various cultural, political, social, regional and gender conflicts of the time. It provides a broad-ranging survey from the major authors and works through to the sub-genres of the period. Jan Austin and Sir Alter Scott are discussed alongside the Gothic Romance, political and feminist fiction, social satire and regional, rural and historical novels. It also provides a comparison of the methods of distribution and marketing and the availability of books then and now; examines cheap popular fiction and children's fiction, and considers the recent debate about the place of prose fiction in a Romantic literature hitherto dominated by poetry.

Romantic Moods
Romantic Moods

Author: Thomas Pfau

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2005-10-20

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 9780801881978

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"Pfau focuses on three specific paradigms of emotive experience: paranoia, trauma, and melancholy. Along the trajectory of Romantic thought paranoia characterizes the disintegration of traditional models of causation and representation during the French Revolution; trauma, the radical political, cultural, and economic restructuring of Central Europe in the Napoleonic era; and melancholy, the dominant post-traumatic condition of stalled, post-Napoleonic history both in England and on the continent."--BOOK JACKET.

A Handbook of Romanticism Studies
A Handbook of Romanticism Studies

Author: Joel Faflak

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-01-19

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1119129613

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The Handbook to Romanticism Studies is an accessible and indispensible resource providing students and scholars with a rich array of historical and up-to-date critical and theoretical contexts for the study of Romanticism. Focuses on British Romanticism while also addressing continental and transatlantic Romanticism and earlier periods Utilizes keywords such as imagination, sublime, poetics, philosophy, race, historiography, and visual culture as points of access to the study of Romanticism and the theoretical concerns and the culture of the period Explores topics central to Romanticism studies and the critical trends of the last thirty years

Romanticism and Popular Magic
Romanticism and Popular Magic

Author: Stephanie Elizabeth Churms

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2019-02-06

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783030048099

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This book explores how Romanticism was shaped by practices of popular magic. It seeks to identify the place of occult activity and culture – in the form of curses, spells, future-telling, charms and protective talismans – in everyday life, together with the ways in which such practice figures, and is refigured, in literary and political discourse at a time of revolutionary upheaval. What emerges is a new perspective on literature’s material contexts in the 1790s – from the rhetorical, linguistic and visual jugglery of the revolution controversy, to John Thelwall’s occult turn during a period of autobiographical self-reinvention at the end of the decade. From Wordsworth’s deployment of popular magic as a socially and politically emancipatory agent in Lyrical Ballads, to Coleridge’s anxious engagement with superstition as a despotic system of ‘mental enslavement’, and Robert Southey’s wrestling with an (increasingly alluring) conservatism he associated with a reliance on ultimately incarcerating systems of superstition.

William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity
William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity

Author: Robert Rix

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9780754656005

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This study traces the links between William Blake's ideas and radical Christian cultures in late eighteenth-century England. A detailed and historically-grounded study of a key literary figure, this book should appeal to Blake scholars and historians with an interest in the radical and religious culture of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. New research on Blake's links to, and reaction against, the Swedenborg New Church make this study a valuable addition to scholarship in this area.