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British State Romanticism contends that changing definitions of state power in the late Romantic period propelled authors to revisit the work of literature as well as the profession of authorship. Traditionally, critics have seen the Romantics as imaginative geniuses and viewed the supposedly less imaginative character of their late work as evidence of declining abilities. Frey argues, in contrast, that late Romanticism offers an alternative aesthetic model that adjusts authorship to work within an expanding and bureaucratizing state. She examines how Wordsworth, Coleridge, Austen, Scott, and De Quincey portray specific state and imperial agencies to debate what constituted government power, through what means government penetrated individual lives, and how non-governmental figures could assume government authority. Defining their work as part of an expanding state, these writers also reworked Romantic structures such as the imagination, organic form, and the literary sublime to operate through state agencies and to convey membership in a nation.
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British State Romanticism
British State Romanticism authorship, agency, and bu r e au c r at i c n at i o n a l i s m
Anne Frey
stanford universit y press stanford, california
Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. This book has been published with the assistance of the Department of English and the AddRan College of Liberal Arts at Texas Christian University. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frey, Anne, 1972– British state romanticism : authorship, agency, and bureaucratic nationalism / Anne Frey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047-6228-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Literature and state—Great Britain. 3. Nationalism and literature—Great Britain. 4. Romanticism—Great Britain. I. Title. PR457.F74 2010 820.9'35841—dc22 2009029787 Typeset by Classic Typography in 11/14 Adobe Garamond
Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
Introduction: Literature and the State in Post-Napoleonic Britain
1.
Fragment Poems and Fragment Nations: The Aesthetics of Ireland in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Late Work
21
2.
Wordsworth’s Establishment Poetics
54
3.
Speaking for the Law: State Agency in Scott’s Novels
88
4.
A Nation Without Nationalism: The Reorganization of Feeling in Austen’s Persuasion
116
5.
De Quincey’s Imperial Systems
140
Notes
165
Index
199
1
Acknowledgments
This book began as a dissertation at Johns Hopkins University, and my greatest debt is to Jerome Christensen, who helped me conceive the original dissertation and whose brilliant readings remain a model for me. I also owe tremendous thanks to Ronald Paulson both for his helpful comments on the dissertation and for the solid grounding his teaching provided me. Stephen Behrendt and my fellow participants in the 2003 NEH Seminar “Rethinking Romantic Fiction” greatly increased the breadth of my engagement with Romantic literary culture. And Karen Fang has my heartfelt gratitude both for her generous and astute attention over the years