Callaghan, M. (2019) The Lake Poets. In: Tuite, C., (ed.) Byron in Context. Literature in Context . Cambridge University Press , pp. 190-196. ISBN 9781107181465
Abstract
“If Southey had not been comparatively good,” writes Herbert F. Tucker, “he would never have drawn out Byron’s best in those satirical volleys that were undertaken, at bottom, in order to reprehend not the want of talent but its wastage.” And if Wordsworth and Coleridge had not been dangerously talented, Byron might have spared them some of his stinging sallies. In Table Talk Coleridge proclaimed the conclusion of the “intellectual war” Byron threatened in Don Juan (XI. 62: 496), declaring Wordsworth the poet who “will wear the crown,” triumphing over Byron and his ilk for the poetic laurels of the Romantic period. But Byron was not simply an opponent of his contemporaries. His responses to the Lake poets, particularly to Wordsworth, ran the gamut from “reverence” (HVSV, 129) then “nausea” (Medwin, 237) to Don Juan’s comical though cutting disdain, in under a decade. Focusing on Byron’s relationship with Wordsworth and Coleridge, I will show how Byron’s poetry and drama reveal the range and complexity of his dialogue with his older peers, where, even at their most apparently divergent, the conversation between the poets reveals the depth of the engagement across their works.
Metadata
Item Type: | Book Section |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 Cambridge University Press. This is an author-produced version of a chapter subsequently published in Byron in Context. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Literary Criticism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of English (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 10 Feb 2020 15:24 |
Last Modified: | 30 Apr 2020 00:39 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Series Name: | Literature in Context |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/9781316850435.024 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:156640 |