MLA 2017 Special Session: Reloading the Romantic Canon
Below is a link to a special session at the MLA 2017 conference. It should be of interest to the K-SAA community. Pamela Clemit presiding.
Until the last two decades of the twentieth century, the canon of British Romantic authors installed by the Victorians looked fixed, though its boundaries were constantly debated. It gave primacy to the ‘big six’ poets — Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Byron, Keats, and Shelley — the most significant modern adjustment being the replacement of Sir Walter Scott by the tradesman-class visionary Blake. Things could not go on like that for much longer. Since the 1980s, there has been recovery, recontextualization, and rehistoricization of both established and previously little-known authors on a grand scale. Many new texts have appeared in the classroom. Study of the literary past continues to yield a constant stream of discoveries, providing evidence and new angles of interpretation which disturb existing certitudes. The subject of this session is work in progress by scholarly editors, based on new finds of archival and rare printed material, which is further reshaping the Romantic canon. It is hoped that the session will catalyse the interest of younger members of the profession, helping to nurture the next generation of textual scholars. The session will comprise three fifteen-minute presentations, leaving ample time for discursive synergies.