Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Introduction: the Return of Waterloo

   • Philip Shaw

   Pages 1-34

3. Walter Scott: the Discipline of History

   • Philip Shaw

   Pages 35-66

4. Exhibiting War: Battle Tours and Panoramas

   • Philip Shaw

   Pages 67-91

5. Southey’s Vision of Command

   • Philip Shaw

   Pages 92-113

6. Coleridge: the Imagination at War

   • Philip Shaw

   Pages 114-139

7. Wordsworth’s Abyss of Weakness

   • Philip Shaw

   Pages 140-164

8. ‘For Want of a Better Cause’: Lord Byron’s War with Posterity

   • Philip Shaw

   Pages 165-191

9. Conclusion

   • Philip Shaw

   Pages 192-211

10. Back Matter

    Pages 212-260

    PDF

Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination offers a new and challenging look at the cultural significance of the Battle of Waterloo, and the impact it had on British Romantic culture. Drawing on a range of approaches it aims to redefine the Romantic period as an age of inter- and intra-national conflict, thus overturning conventional notions of 'The Romantic Project', and re-writing the period from first principles. Topics covered include: the impact of Waterloo on Romantic ideas of individual and national identity, the representation of the dead and wounded in poetry, painting and prose, the work of canonical and non-canonical poets.

• Coleridge
• prose
• Romanticism
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• William Wordsworth
• British and Irish Literature

'Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination is a stimulating and exciting book, written with authority and intelligence...' - Simon Bainbridge, Department of English, Keele University

'This study of the British literary response to Waterloo is a book about endings: the ending of the long war with France, the ending of forty thousand lives...an ambitious and intelligent book from which we can all learn.' - Gavin Edwards, University of Glamorgan Literature and History

' [A] persuasive and thorough analysis.' - Gillen D'Arcy Wood, University of Illinois, USA

PHILIP SHAW is Lecturer in English at the University of Leicester. He is the editor of Romantic Wars: Studies in Culture and Conflict, 1789-1822.

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