Research Guides: ENGL 3650: Romantic Literature: Background Research

Background Research for Romantic Literature

One of the best ways to get started on research—especially for topics that are new to you—is to take a step back from the databases and learn as much as you can about the context of your topic. The more you know about Romantics' historical and social context, the easier it will be to identify themes and build arguments.

These books are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the library's collection of materials about Romantic literature. For recommended books about Romantic era history, scroll down. Use the instructions at the bottom of this page to find books about specific authors and poets, social and political issues, and other topics related to Romantic literature.

30 Great Myths about the Romantics (Ebook) by Duncan Wu
Publication Date: 2015

Brimming with the fascinating eccentricities of a complex and confusing movement whose influences continue to resonate deeply, 30 Great Myths About the Romantics adds great clarity to what we know - or think we know - about one of the most important periods in literary history. It explores the various misconceptions commonly associated with Romanticism, offering provocative insights that correct and clarify several of the commonly-held myths about the key figures of this era
Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature (Print Book) by James Chandler (Editor)
Publication Date: 2009

The Romantic period was one of the most creative, intense and turbulent periods of English literature, an age marked by revolution, reaction and reform in politics, and by the invention of imaginative literature in its distinctively modern form...Reflecting the most up-to-date research, the essays in this history are designed both to provide a narrative of Romantic literature and to offer new and stimulating readings of the key texts.
Crisis of Literature in the 1790s: Print Culture and the Public Sphere (Ebook) by Paul Keen
Publication Date: 1999

This book offers an original study of the debates which arose in the 1790s about the nature and social role of literature. Paul Keen shows how these debates were situated at the intersection of the French Revolution and a more gradual revolution in information and literacy reflecting the aspirations of the professional classes in eighteenth-century England. He shows these movements converging in hostility to a new class of readers, whom critics saw as dangerously subject to the effects of seditious writings or the vagaries of literary fashion.
Revolutions in Romantic Literature (Print Book) by Paul Keen (Editor)
Publication Date: 2004

This anthology includes an impressive range of writings from the period (including literary criticism and philosophical, political, scientific, and travel writing) which embodies the collection's broad approach to Romantic literature. Both lesser-known and more canonical writings are included, and the selections are organized by topic in such a way as to dramatize the debates and exchanges which characterize the Romantic period.
Romantic Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Ebook) by Elizabeth A Bohls
Publication Date: 2013

Arguing that literature of the Romantic period must be understood in the context of British colonial expansion and imperial rule, this text surveys Romantic literature's role in consolidating Britain as the centre of empire. It highlights the ways in which the expanding print market served readers eager to learn about the wider world: Romantic poetry and travel writing, for example, went hand in hand.
Science and Sensation in Romantic Poetry (Ebook) by Noel Jackson
Publication Date: 2008

Romantic poets, notably Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge and Keats, were deeply interested in how perception and sensory experience operate, and in the connections between sense-perception and aesthetic experience. Noel Jackson tracks this preoccupation through the Romantic period and beyond, both in relation to late eighteenth-century human sciences, and in the context of momentous social transformations in the period of the French Revolution. Combining close readings of the poems with interdisciplinary research into the history of the human sciences, Noel Jackson sheds light on Romantic efforts to define how art is experienced in relation to the newly emerging sciences of the mind and shows the continued relevance of these ideas to our own habits of cultural and historical criticism today.
Why the Romantics Matter (Ebook) by Peter Gay
Publication Date: 2015

With his usual wit and élan, esteemed historian Peter Gay enters the contentious, long-standing debates over the romantic period. Here, in this concise and inviting volume, he reformulates the definition of romanticism and provides a fresh account of the immense achievements of romantic writers and artists in all media. Gay's scope is wide, his insights sharp. He takes on the recurring questions about how to interpret romantic figures and their works. Who qualifies to be a romantic? What ties together romantic figures who practice in different countries, employ different media, even live in different centuries? How is modernism indebted to romanticism, if at all?

Background Research for Romantic Era History

Handbook of British Romanticism (Ebook) by Ralf Haekel (Editor)
Publication Date: 2017

A state-of-the-art investigation of Romantic literature and theory, a field that probably changed more quickly and more fundamentally than any other traditional era in literary studies. This handbook features discussions of key concepts such as history, class, gender, science, and the use of media as well as a thorough account of the most central literary genres around the turn of the 19th century.
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783-1846 (Ebook) by Boyd Hilton
Publication Date: 2006

This was a transformative period in English history. In 1783 the country was at one of the lowest points in its fortunes, having just lost its American colonies in warfare. By 1846 it was once more a great imperial nation, as well as the world's strongest power and dominant economy, having benefited from what has sometimes (if misleadingly) been called the "first industrial revolution." In the meantime, it survived a decade of invasion fears and emerged victorious from more than twenty years of "war to the death" against Napoleonic France. But if Britain's external fortunes were in the ascendant, the situation at home remained fraught with peril.
Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age (Print book) by Iain McCalman (Editor) et al.
Publication Date: 2001

For the first time in this innovative reference book, the Romantic Age is surveyed across all aspects of British culture, rather than in literary or artistic terms alone. The Companion's two-part structure presents forty-two essays on major topics, by leading international experts, cross-referenced to an extensive alphabetical section covering all the principal figures, events, and movements in the broad culture of the period.

Finding Books

This list is only a starting point of commonly used books in this area, not a complete list of library books on the subject. To find other books on this subject, use the search box on the library's homepage. To find other books on this subject, use the search box on the library's homepage. The search box defaults to OneSearch. To look for books, toggle over to Books. This will limit your search to books and ebooks.

Finding Books: UVU Fulton Library Homepage
Use the search box on the library's homepage to search for more books. Enter a few search terms, a title, or an author into the box, then hit enter or click the magnifying glass. Once your search runs, you can filter your results by clicking the All Filters button, located just below the search box.

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