Synopsis
Something happened to the literary field at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that thing was not Romanticism, or at least not Romanticism as it has traditionally been understood. The event was the quantifiable dominance of the novel as the most important literary genre of the day. Much more concerned with the unexpected, the unconventional, and the uncanny than their immediate predecessors or successors, the novels of the Romantic era have often puzzled critics, who fear that they achieve neither the compelling realism of the eighteenth-century novel, nor the psychological complexity of the Victorian novel. Yet this period produced some of the most important novelists of British literary history, including Jane Austen and Walter Scott. The essays collected in Recognizing the Romantic Novel emerge out of the current re-evaluation of the vibrancy and centrality of the Romantic era novel, and showcase the diversity of important new voices and directions in the field.

Featuring essays from such distinguished scholars as Mary L. Jacobus, Ian Duncan, Ina Ferris and Saree Makdisi this timely volume will be required reading for scholars of the Romantic era.

Liverpool English Texts and Studies 53

256pp, 234 x 156mm, hardback

Pub date: November 2008