| Description |
1 online resource (ix, 177 pages). |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Series |
Comparative cultural studies ; 30
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Comparative cultural studies ; 30.
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| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 158-173) and index. |
| Contents |
Wordsworthian intertexts in Kincaid's Lucy -- Specters of US empire in Atwood's fiction -- McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Byron, and the US frontier -- Keatsian echoes and US materialism in The Great Gatsby -- The Coleridgean poetics of palace of the peacock -- Conclusion: British legacy in the Americas. |
| Summary |
Why are twentieth-century novelists from former British colonies in the Americas preoccupied with British Romantic poetry? In Romantic Revisions, Lauren Rule Maxwell examines five novels?Kincaid?s Lucy, Atwood?s The Handmaid?s Tale, McCarthy?s Blood Meridian, Fitzgerald?s The Great Gatsby, and Harris?s Palace of the Peacock?that contain crucial scenes engaging British Romantic poetry. Each work adapts figures from British Romantic poetry and translates them into an American context. Kincaid relies on the repeated image of the daffodil, Atwood displaces Lucy, McCarthy upends the American arcadia, Fitzgerald heaps Keatsian images of excess, and Harris transforms the albatross. In her close readings, Maxwell suggests that the novels reframe Romantic poetry to allegorically confront empire, revealing how subjectivity is shaped by considerations of place and power. Returning to British Romantic poetry allows the novels to extend the Romantic poetics of landscape that traditionally considered the British subject?s relation to place. By recasting Romantic poetics in the Americas, these novels show how negotiations of identity and power are defined by the legacies of British imperialism, illustrating that these nations, their peoples, and their works of art are truly postcolonial. While many postcolonial scholars and critics have dismissed the idea that Romantic poetry can be used to critique colonialism, Maxwell suggests that, on the contrary, it has provided contemporary writers across the Americas with a means of charting the literary and cultural legacies of British imperialism in the New World. The poems of the British Romantics offer postcolonial writers particularly rich material, Maxwell argues, because they characterize British influence at the height of the British empire. In explaining how the novels adapt figures from British Romantic poetry, Romantic Revisions provides scholars and students working in postcolonial studies, Romanticism, and English-language literature with a new look at politics of location in the Americas. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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American fiction. |
| Chronological Term |
20th century |
| Subject |
Romanticism -- Influence.
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Romanticism -- Influence. |
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Romanticism. |
| Chronological Term |
1900 - 1999 |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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Electronic books.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Maxwell, Lauren Rule. Romantic revisions in novels from the Americas. West Lafayette, Ind. : Purdue University Press, ©2013 9781557536419 (DLC) 2012039049 (OCoLC)806019478 |
| ISBN |
9781612492612 (electronic book) |
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1612492614 (electronic book) |
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9781612492629 (electronic book) |
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1612492622 (electronic book) |
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9781557536419 |
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1557536414 |
|
