The essays in this volume revalue the work of the Romantic-era Scottish writer John Galt, connecting his methods and goals with Scottish Enlightenment "conjectural" historiography and with later social theorizing. Emphasizing the construction, representation and use of social knowledge, the essays find new meaning in Galt's perceptions of the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds in which he traveled, his attitudes toward community building and progress, and his innovations in fiction, drama, journalism and biography.
The Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature is an authoritative three-volume reference work that covers British artistic, literary, and intellectual movements between 1780 and 1830, within the context of European, transatlantic and colonial historical and cultural interaction. Comprises over 275 entries ranging from 1,000 to 6,500 words arranged in A-Z format across three fully cross-referenced volumes Written by an international cast of leading and emerging scholars Entries explore genre development in prose, poetry, and drama of the Romantic period, key authors and their works, and key themes Also available online as part of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature, providing 24/7 access and powerful searching, browsing and cross-referencing capabilities
Wondering how to entertain guests at your Halloween party this year? Why not recite a poem, tell a story, or present a parlor drama? A Halloween Reader is sure to add excitement to the celebration. This sourcebook of Halloween lore spans British, Irish, and American literature from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, from Robert Burns and Edgar Allan Poe to James Joyce and H. P. Lovecraft. Each of the poems, stories, and plays in this comprehensive anthology provides a link to Halloween celebrations of the past. "A Halloween Party," by Caroline Ticknor, is a humorous short story about a nineteenth-century New Yorker's first Halloween party. The macabre soliloquy from Sydney Dobell's Balder paints a dark, haunting picture of the hallowed eve. Robert Burns' "Halloween" gives a detailed description of the night of October 31 in eighteenth-century southwestern Scotland. The "Hallowoddities" section of the book includes witch-trial testimony, journal entries, and other spooky pieces related to Halloween. A Halloween Reader provides an overview of the holiday's roots and of how it has changed since it began in the British Isles more than one thousand years ago. In older literature, the dead are viewed as a supernatural evil, but one that can teach, predict, and warn, because they have seen the future that is hidden to us. In twentieth-century and current literature, however, the dead are portrayed as more humanly evil, returning as zombies to exact revenge or to otherwise terrorize the living. As Ms. Bannatyne says in her introduction, "The boundary between the vibrant world we live in and the underground world of worms is thin and brittle; it's only a matter of time. What makes the older Halloween literature so enthralling is that it lets us travel back and forth to the land of the dead without consequence."
Offers Galt's most successful novel, a microcosm of fifty years of Scottish historyProvides a comprehensive Introduction by the volume editor which tells the story of this novel's production and reception; describes the literary and intellectual traditions on which it drew; and explains its relation to the social and political turmoil of the years in which it was written and publishedIncludes extensive Explanatory Notes which identify Galt's biblical allusions, references to historical events, and social and cultural practices of the period in which the novel is setThe appendices identify Galt's real-life sources for some of his incidents, and explain the history and institutions of the Church of Scotland as relevant to the storyMaps assist the reader to understand the geography on which the novel is acted out: south-west Scotland and its relation to the British IslesJohn Galt's Annals of the Parish is the first novel of the Industrial Revolution. Narrated by the minister of a rural Scottish parish, it chronicles with humour and pathos the fifty years 1760-1810 from the perspective of ordinary people swept up in social and economic transformation.
