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Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture General Editor: Joseph Bristow, Professor of English, UCLA Editorial Advisory Board: Hilary Fraser, Birkbeck College, University of London; Josephine McDonagh, Linacre College, University of Oxford; Yopie Prins, University of Michigan; Lindsay Smith, University of Sussex; Margaret D. Stetz, University of Delaware; and Jenny Bourne Taylor, University of Sussex Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture is a new monograph series that aims to represent the most innovative research on literary works that were produced in the English-speaking world from the time of the Napoleonic Wars to the fin de siècle. Attentive to the historical continuities between ‘Romantic’ and ‘Victorian’, the series will feature studies that help scholarship to reassess the meaning of these terms during a century marked by diverse cultural, literary, and political movements. The main aim of the series is to look at the increasing influence of types of historicism on our understanding of literary forms and genres. It reflects the shift from critical theory to cultural history that has affected not only the period 1800–1900 but also every field within the discipline of English literature. All titles in the series seek to offer fresh critical perspectives and challenging readings of both canonical and non-canonical writings of this era. Titles include: Laurel Brake and Julie F. Codell (editors) ENCOUNTERS IN THE VICTORIAN PRESS Editors, Authors, Readers Dennis Denisoff SEXUAL VISUALITY FROM LITERATURE TO FILM, 1850–1950 Laura E. Franey VICTORIAN TRAVEL WRITING AND IMPERIAL VIOLENCE Lawrence Frank VICTORIAN DETECTIVE FICTION AND THE NATURE OF EVIDENCE The Scientific Investigations of Poe, Dickens and Doyle Stephanie Kuduk Weiner REPUBLICAN POLITICS AND ENGLISH POETRY, 1789–1874 David Payne THE REENCHANTMENT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY FICTION Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot and Serialization Ana Parejo Vadillo WOMEN POETS AND URBAN AESTHETICISM Passengers of Modernity Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–97700–9 (hardback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Republican Politics and English Poetry, 1789–1874 Stephanie Kuduk Weiner © Stephanie Kuduk Weiner 2005 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-9335-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-54395-3 ISBN 978-0-230-59968-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230599680 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kuduk Weiner, Stephanie, 1972– Republican politics and English poetry, 1789–1874/Stephanie Kuduk Weiner. p. cm. — (Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4039-9335-1 (cloth) 1. English poetry—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Politics and literature—Great Britain—History—19th century. 3. Politics and literature—Great Britain—History—18th century. 4. Republicanism— Great Britain—History—19th century. 5. Republicanism—Great Britain—History—18th century. 6. English poetry—18th century— History and criticism. 7. Political poetry, English—History and criticism. 8. Republicanism in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PR585.H5K83 2005 821′.609358—dc22 2005041953 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 for Mark Love and harmony combine, And around our souls intwine, While thy branches mix with mine, And our roots together join. Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 Republican Demystification in Politics for the People and Blake’s Songs of Experience 17 2 Two Defence[s] of Poetry: Shelley and the Newgate Magazine 35 3 Cooper and Linton: Chartist Prophets and Craftsmen 66 4 Landor, Clough, and European Republicanism 97 5 Meredith, Thomson, and Swinburne, 1867–1874 133 Conclusion 177 Notes 181 Index 213 vii Acknowledgements Barbara Gelpi, Herbert Lindenberger, Joss Marsh, and Peter Stansky oversaw the earliest version of this work, and I am deeply indebted to their criticism and support. For their help in conceiving this project, and their support throughout, I also wish to thank Florence Boos, Lisa Cody, Regenia Gagnier, Robert Kaufman, Purnima Mankekar, Monica Moore, and the Victorian Studies Group at Stanford University: Helen Blythe, Kenneth Brewer, Jason Camlot, Lisa Jenkins, Diana Maltz, Richard Menke, Paul St Amour, Ardel Thomas, and Kate Washington. I am grateful to the many faculty members and students at Wesleyan University, and friends in New Haven, who offered support and, in many cases, read and commented upon portions of the manuscript. I wish to extend a special thanks to Henry Abelove, Steve Angle, Yaron Aronowicz, Sally Bachner, Sarah Bilston, Christina Crosby, Gertrude Hughes, Aaron Kunin, Mary Livingston, Sean McCann, Carmen Moreno-Nuño, Jamie Novogrod, Joel Pfister, Jill Rapaport, Joe Reed, Kit Reed, Shelley Rosenblum, Julia Simon-Kerr, Ori Simchen, William Stowe, Khachig Tololyan, and Katie Trumpener. Casey Quinn was an indefatigable research assistant. I am grateful also to the reviewers and editors whose comments contributed to the revision of this book. My thanks to Joseph Bristow go back to his days at the Humanities Center at Stanford. I thank him for all his critical engagement and encouragement. I am happy to acknowledge the assistance I have received from the librarians and staff at the British Library, the Bishopsgate Institute, Stanford University, Yale University, and Wesleyan University, and I wish in particular to thank the interlibrary loan and special collections librarians in Wesleyan’s Olin Library. I also gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint a revised version of two earlier articles, ‘“A Sword of a Song”: Swinburne’s Republican Aesthetics,’ Victorian Studies 43.2 (Winter 2001): 253–79 and ‘Sedition, Chartism, and Epic Poetry in Thomas Cooper’s Purgatory of Suicides,’ Victorian Poetry 39.2 (Summer 2001): 165–86, which appear here in Chapters 3 and 5. Finally, I thank my sister, Andrea, and my parents, Dave and Cathy Kuduk, for years of enthusiasm and boundless generosity. With love and deepest gratitude of all, for all his gifts, not least the inspiration he has provided me and his faith in me as a scholar and writer, I dedicate this book to my husband, Mark S. Weiner. viii Introduction This book examines the poetic life of republican political ideas in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. Analyzing the work of poets who espoused republican ideals, from William Blake to W. J. Linton to Algernon Charles Swinburne, this study shows how republican poems reflected and refracted the theories of political change that animated the expressive cultures of republican radicalism. Beginning with songs of demystification written in the wake of the French Revolution, I trace the history of nineteenth-century republican poetry through poets’ contri- butions to the rebuilding of republican politics during the 1820s, the proliferation and diversification of republican poetry during the 1840s and 1850s, and its dispersal into aestheticism, advanced liberalism, and secularism during the 1870s. Through this historical approach, I tell the story of the intertwined fate of republican politics and republican poetry, connecting the philosophical debates, organizational practices, cultural institutions, and political events of republican politics to the formal strategies of republican verse. The argument advanced here has two principal parts. First, this book asserts the importance of republicanism to the literary history of Romantic and Victorian England. To some extent, that importance has been axio- matic within the study of Romantic poetry, whose relation to the French Revolution has long been a subject of literary-historical analysis. Yet the central place of republican thought and political commitment within nineteenth-century English culture has been obscured by the pride of place afforded within studies of literary radicalism to the proto-socialist and socialist political tradition and by period divisions between Romantic and Victorian literature. Attending to republican poetry—Romantic and Victorian, popular and elite—reconfigures the literary history of the century to reveal a new series of ties across class and period, highlighting 1 2 Republican Politics and English Poetry, 1789–1874 both continuities and changes in England’s cultural engagement with the idea of representative government, by any account one of the central issues of English political history and the broader history of Western modernity. The structure of this book follows from this part of my argument, attending both to change over time and to poets’ intersecting contributions to each historical moment. Second, this book argues that the political work of poetry inheres not so much in its hortatory messages as in its intellectual efforts. On one level, this argument follows the claims made by republican poets themselves that poetic forms were essential to the political role of poetry. They tended to ally formal innovation with political progress, and they also typically defined poetry’s agency in emotional and epistemological terms: poetry, they believed, cultivated readers’ ethical sympathies and opened their minds to a clear vision of the world as it is and could be. On another level, this argument bypasses poets’ intention. Poetic forms, I argue, made possible a unique richness and complexity of political ideas by offering poets a unique set of tools for making meaning. As a discursive medium characterized by explicit formalism, compression, and multiva- lence, poetry organized knowledge and experience in ways that shaped, as well as conveyed, republican ideas. Consequently, the contribution in intellectual and imaginative energy that poets made to republican political movements took place within, as well as through, poetic dynamics. The methodological approach of this study, as I will discuss in greater detail below, reflects this emphasis. My focus on poetic events and their relation to political matters requires an interdisciplinary methodology that combines formalist criticism with historical analysis. The story of republican poetry follows that of republican politics. Nineteenth-century English republicanism not only drew upon, but also differed from, the civic humanist and commonwealth traditions with which it shares the name ‘republican,’ as it did from the American, Irish, and European democratic and nationalist movements that also went under that banner. Emerging from the political upheaval and realign- ments of the 1790s, this was a republicanism at whose center stood the ideal of representative government: a polity organized according to the principles of popular sovereignty and an expanded, ultimately universal suffrage. It was anti-monarchical, at least in theory and emphatically in spirit, and democratic, justifying the political participation of a wide section of the citizenry as a good in its own right. This configuration of political ideas represented a startling recombin- ation of languages and positions that had long been opposed to one another. Most unexpectedly, it fused elements of both the civic humanist

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