No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Ireland and Scotland witnessed a huge explosion in the publication of printed verse in the Romantic era as a plethora of poets ventured into print in the wake of Robert Burn's Kilmarnock edition. They produced an interesting and diverse, yet largely neglected, body of verse which is characterised by aesthetic, stylistic and linguistic variety. A re-evaluation of this body of literature casts new light on the interconnections between Scottish and Irish literary traditions. The links between Irish and Scottish poets and contemporise and predecessors from other parts of the archipelago, and their involvement in wider literary trends, also suggests that Romanticism could be re-configured as an archipelagic phenomenon. There were certainly potent Hiberno-Scottish links during this period as is demonstrated by the work of Thomas Dermody and James Orr, who were profoundly influenced by Burns. This thesis identifies and studies a series of inter-connected genres that achieved a particular resonance in Ireland and Scotland during the Romantic era. The New Year poem, the apparition poem, the valediction, the self-elegy, the graveyard meditation, the Habbie elegy and dying words all draw on the motif of loss and all become conspicuous features of the literary terrain. The use of genre as an organising paradigm means that a wide range of texts can be discussed and a sense of the variety of aesthetic and stylistic approaches adopted by Irish and Scottish poets of the period can be conveyed. By employing comparative paradigms and organising the study by genre, national barriers can be transcended and Ireland and Scotland's interwoven literary histories are thrown into sharp focus. These genres demonstrate the agreements and divergences that characterise Irish and Scottish literature of the Romantic era. Several of them demonstrate the traditionally overlooked influence of Scottish literature, and in particular the poetry of Burns on Irish poets. Other genres, meanwhile, demonstrate that contrasting historical, political and cultural contexts could manifest themselves in divergences in the way the genres were manipulated in Ireland and Scotland.

No description available.

This study explores the significance and relevant contexts of the collected poems of James Beattie, within a detailed study of his own prose works and wider eighteenth-century intellectual debates. His position on the periphery of the literary canon means that this thesis deals largely with primary material, which permits a more thorough and objective analysis than has been conducted before. The first half of this study deals with Beattie’s poetic output. Chapter 1 focuses on Beattie’s first volume of poetry, Original Poems and Translations. In this chapter I analyse the poems within the context of other eighteenth-century poets, and explore Beattie’s engagement with patronage, the eighteenth-century conventions for success as a new poet, and poetic genius. Chapter 2 deals with Beattie's second volume, Poems on Several Subjects, to illustrate the evolution in his ideas concerning the usefti๒ess of poetry as a vehicle for philosophical investigation, and his engagement with eighteenth-century social and political issues. Chapter 3 explores his best known poem, The Minstrel: Or, the Progress of Genius. This chapter discusses the poem in its entirety and within the context of Beattie’s career as a poet and philosopher. Chapter 5 focuses on Beattie's final volumes of poetry, which represent his desire to control his poetic legacy. The second half of the study deals with selected critical and philosophical works, which provide insight into the development of Beattie’s poetry and express in prose many of the subjects in lus poetry. The most detailed attention in this section is given to the Essay on Truth, although there are also chapters examining other relevant critical works including Dissertations Moral and Critical. On Poetry and Music and On Laughter and Ludicrous Composition, and Beattie's collection of "Scoticisms." There are few modem critical studies of Beattie, and many of them are limited to The Minstrel and to specific areas of interest within this work. This study's comparative and interdisciplinary approach to Beattie’s poetry and selected prose aims to justify Beattie’s inclusion in our study of the eighteenth century. It is also intended to raise awareness of Beattie’s importance in the eighteenth-century and to illustrate his influence on three first- generation Romantic poets of generally recognised importance, namely Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.

In this thesis, Christopher Smart's work is presented as a coherent project of ‘Englishing' to produce nationalised verse celebrating England and promoting the Anglican Church. Chapter One places Smart's original religious poetry within the context of his translations. The analysis concentrates on three themes: the promotion of England in the Hymns and Spiritual Songs; Smart's manipulation of verbal effects as a variety of translation in Jubilate Agno; and an interpretation of A Song to David as a form of applied praise. Chapter Two provides an analysis of Smart's translation of the Psalms alongside a number of other similar productions. Five elements are examined: narrative identity in translation, the place of Smart's psalms within an anglicised liturgy; Christian elements, censoring the Psalms; and the creation of English lyric through the domestication of biblical verse. Chapter Three examines Smart's translation of the fables of Phaedrus, where the significance of Smart's Englishing project is reinforced in the context of his interpreting a Romanised text. The genre of fable is considered in its eighteenth-century political and educational contexts, illustrated with detailed reference to Smart's periodical fables from the 1750s and the poet's rewriting of Phaedrus in the following decade. Finally, Chapter Four provides a complete assessment of the 1767 Works of Horace. First, Smart's translation is considered alongside other translations and interpretations of Horace and his work. Smart's Englished text is then explored in three areas: the translator's paratextual mediation between text and reader, the creation of anglicised settings, and the development of English lyrical forms from Latin originals. The thesis concludes with an examination of how Smart's translation work results in the creation of original lyric verse that seals the poet's literary permanence.