Romantic-Era Irish Women Poets in English: a K-SAA ‘What Are You Reading?’ Special, Part 2. As a part of our ‘What Are You Reading?’ series on the K-SAA Blog, we’re delighted to present a Q&A with Professor Stephen Behrendt to mark the publication of his new work, Romantic-Era Irish Women Poets in English. Behrendt’s collected edition is the first to represent a wide range of female Irish poets active during the Romantic period all in one volume. It has been described by critics as ‘a rich treasure-trove of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Irish women’s poetry’. You can read the first part of this special edition post here, where Behrendt discusses his work in more detail. In the second part, we asked Professor Behrendt about archival finds, his interest in Irish female poets, and, of course, what he is currently reading! What initially sparked your interest in Irish female poets of the Romantic period, and how did the idea for your edited collection
Living as an Author in the Romantic Period: a K-SAA ‘What Are You Reading?’ Special: Part 2 As a part of our ‘What Are You Reading?’ series on the K-SAA Blog, we’re delighted to present a Q&A with Matthew Sangster to mark the publication of his monograph Living as an Author in the Romantic Period. Part of the Palgrave series Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print, the book uses previously-underutilised archives to show that during the Romantic period, authorship operated principally as a relatively restricted social system, rather than a profession or mode of artistic practice. You can read the first post by Sangster to introduce his research here. Today in part 2, we put some questions to the author and ask him about sociability, archives, favourite critical studies, teaching, and what he’s reading next. You can catch up on part 1 here! Why do you think it is important to study ‘literary sociability’ in the Romantic period? The flippant answe
Living as an Author in the Romantic Period: a K-SAA ‘What Are You Reading?’ Special: Part 1 We’ve been delighted to have so many wonderful contributors to our ‘What Are You Reading?’ series on the K-SAA Blog. Today, we present a post by Dr Matthew Sangster to mark the publication of his monograph Living as an Author in the Romantic Period. Part of the Palgrave series Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print, the book uses previously-underutilised archives to show that during the Romantic period, authorship operated principally as a relatively restricted social system, rather than a profession or mode of artistic practice. Described by critics as ‘field-changing’ and ‘a compelling revision of the standard account of the advent of professional authorship in the early nineteenth century’, Sangster’s work is an exciting exploration of authors’ practices in the Romantic period, examining subjects such as literary networks, periodical culture, political coteries
Here at the K-SAA we are thrilled to present a special Q&A with Dr Bysshe Inigo Coffey, author of the acclaimed Shelley’s Broken World: Fractured Materiality and Intermitted Song. Published by Liverpool University Press, Coffey’s monograph is described as a ‘provocative and profound reassessment of Shelley’s poetic art and thought’, and excitingly uses previously unstudied and unpublished Shelleyan materials, including the ‘Marlow List’, to reveal more about Shelley and his works. Lauded by critics as ‘a major contribution to the rich field of current Shelley studies’ and ‘a work of scholarly elegance as well as depth’, Coffey’s work not only offers innovative study of Shelley’s own reading, but offers a new and exciting exploration into the works of Percy Shelley. What initially sparked your interest in Shelley, and how did the idea for your book come about? Shelley was a great surprise. I read a lot as a child in both Kernewek (Cornish) and English. I’ve been collecting languages
For February’s What Are You Reading?, we spoke to Merrilees Roberts, an Independent Scholar based near London. Her work encompasses Romanticism, philosophy, psychology, poetics and literary theory, with a particular focus on Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was the subject of her doctoral thesis. She has recently published work on Prometheus Unbound in the Keats-Shelley Review, on Shelley’s prefaces in Romanticism, and a book chapter on Shame, affect and The Cenci in Affect Theory and Literary Critical Practice: A Feel for the Text (Palgrave, 2019). Her first monograph, Shelley’s Poetics of Reticence: Shelley’s Shame, was published by Routledge in April 2020. This work explores the affective, rhetorical and phenomenological links between shame and reticence, and sheds new light on the psychology of Shelley’s anguished poet-Subject. What new studies of Romantic literature are you reading right now? I am slowing exploring The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay
For December’s What Are You Reading?, we were privileged to interview Dr Charlotte May. Dr May is currently a Cultural Engagement Fellow on an AHRC-funded project about Robert Southey’s Keswick (PI: Professor Lynda Pratt). This project is in conjunction with Keswick Museum to promote its important and under-used collections relating to the controversial nineteenth century Poet Laureate and historian Robert Southey (1774-1843). What’s your favourite part of working on your current project? My career has very much focused on the public engagement front of academia, although I have also held various teaching posts. As a literary historian, I have always worked with archives and museums, and it really is such a privilege to do so, especially as the heritage sector has had a particularly challenging year. What are you working on at the moment, and which writing informs your ongoing research? My PhD was an edition of the selected letters of Samuel Rogers, and I am working on art
This month we had the honor of speaking to Jonathan Gonzalez, a final-year PhD candidate at the University of La Rioja. His dissertation, Writing to Last: Wordsworth’s Poetics of Immortality and the Cult of Romantic Genius, considers the Romantic cult of posterity, the construction of a textual life-after-death, and Wordsworth’s poetics of immortality. His broader research interests include nineteenth-century reading practices, the relationship between poetry and place, as well as Romantic-era walking and perceptions of landscape. He has written on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, and his first book, a critical edition of the latter’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal, will be published by Routledge in 2021. What new studies of Romantic literature are you reading right now? I try to maintain interests in and keep up to date with new writing in the field—whether it is right up my street or not. Over the past few months Tom Duggett’s critical edition of So
It’s time for a ‘What Are You Reading’ interview, this time with PhD candidate, Chris Kelleher. Chris studies at the University of Toronto, is Chancellor Jackman Junior Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute, and a former fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto. Completed as part of the “Second Cities in the Circuits of Empire” research project based in the University of Glasgow and funded by the British Academy, Chris’ work examines the history of imperial circulation during the Romantic period, as well as the emergence of cosmopolitan culture within the modern global credit economy. He has published an essay in English Language Notes and recently had another essay accepted for publication in Studies in English Literature, entitled “Oriental Debts and Occidental Avatars in Robert Southey’s The Curse of Kehama.” Chris has also written for University Affairs Magazine and the NASSR Grad Student Blog. You can read our other ‘What Are You Reading?’ inter
The K-SAA is grateful to all the excellent contributors to the ‘What Are You Reading?’ series on the Blog so far! We hope you are enjoying these interviews. Today, we present a special Q&A with Kate Singer (Associate Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and K-SAA Secretary) to mark the publication of her monograph Romantic Vacancy: The Poetics of Gender, Affect, and Radical Speculation. Described by critics as a ‘formidable text for our time’, Romantic Vacancy argues that, at the cult of sensibility’s height, Romantic writers found alternative tropes of affect to express movement beyond sensation and the body. Readers of the text will learn about the deep history of how poetic language can help us move beyond binary gender and its limiting intellectual and affective ideologies. You can read our other ‘What Are You Reading?’ special interview here, and see all the posts in the series here. Perhaps you have a new publication in Romantic studies that you’d l
We hope you have enjoyed the various interviews presented in the K-SAA’s ‘What Are You Reading?’ series so far. Today we are delighted to continue the series with a fascinating response from Deborah Lam. Deborah is a PhD researcher and Associate Tutor at the University of Bristol, and she explains her current project: My thesis attempts to define an aesthetics of excess in the work of Keats and the Pre-Raphaelite Circle, and explores forms of copiousness from poetry to visual art. Currently, I am convening the Poetry module for the English Literature and Community Engagement BA. Before coming to Bristol, I read English and Related Literature at the University of York, and then for an MPhil in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, during which my dissertation examined visions, optical phenomena and phenomenology in Coleridge’s writing. In these posts we hope to support and encourage discussions relating to the latest Romantic-
