Romanticism, History, Historicism: Essays on an Orthodoxy by Damian Walford Davies (University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK)
The (re)turn to history in Romantic Studies in the 1980s marked the beginning of a critical orthodoxy that continues to condition, if not define, our sense of the Romantic period twenty-five years on. Romantic New Historicism's revisionary engagements have played a central role in the realignment of the field and in the expansion of the Romantic canon. In this major new collection of eleven essays, critics reflect on New Historicism's inheritance, its achievements and its limitations. Integrating a self-reflexive engagement with New Historicism's history and detailed attention to a range of Romantic lives and literary texts, the collection offers a close-up view of Romanticism's hybrid present, and a dynamic vision of its future.