Romantic Hellenism and Women Writers

179 Pages·2013·2.267 MB·English

by  Noah Comet (auth.)

Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print
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Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print will feature work
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between disciplines. Uniquely, it will combine efforts to engage the power and materiality
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Titles include:
Melanie Bigold
WOMEN OF LETTERS, MANUSCRIPT CIRCULATION, AND PRINT AFTERLIVES IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Elizabeth Rowe, Catharine Cockburn, and Elizabeth Carter
Ildiko Csengei
SYMPATHY, SENSIBILITY AND THE LITERATURE OF FEELING IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
Noah Comet
ROMANTIC HELLENISM AND WOMEN WRITERS
Elizabeth Eger
BLUESTOCKINGS
Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism
Ina Ferris and Paul Keen (editors)
BOOKISH HISTORIES
Books, Literature, and Commercial Modernity, 1700–1900
John Gardner
POETRY AND POPULAR PROTEST
Peterloo, Cato Street and the Queen Caroline Controversy
George C. Grinnell
THE AGE OF HYPOCHONDRIA
Interpreting Romantic Health and Illness
Anthony S. Jarrells
BRITAIN’S BLOODLESS REVOLUTIONS
1688 and the Romantic Reform of Literature
Jacqueline M. Labbe
WRITING ROMANTICISM
Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, 1784–1807
Michelle Levy
FAMILY AUTHORSHIP AND ROMANTIC PRINT CULTURE
April London
LITERARY HISTORY WRITING, 1770–1820
Robert Miles
ROMANTIC MISFITS
Tom Mole
BYRON’S ROMANTIC CELEBRITY
Industrial Culture and the Hermeneutic of Intimacy
Robert Morrison and Daniel Sanjiv Roberts (editors)
ROMANTICISM AND BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE
‘An Unprecedented Phenomenon’
Catherine Packham
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VITALISM
Bodies, Culture, Politics
Nicola Parsons
READING GOSSIP IN EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
Jessica Richard
THE ROMANCE OF GAMBLING IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH NOVEL
Andrew Rudd
SYMPATHY AND INDIA IN BRITISH LITERATURE, 1770–1830
Erik Simpson
LITERARY MINSTRELSY, 1770–1830
Minstrels and Improvisers in British, Irish and American Literature
Anne H. Stevens
BRITISH HISTORICAL FICTION BEFORE SCOTT
David Stewart
ROMANTIC MAGAZINES AND METROPOLITAN LITERARY CULTURE
Rebecca Tierney-Hynes
NOVEL MINDS
Philosophers and Romance Readers, 1680–1740
P. Westover
NECROMANTICISM
Travelling to Meet the Dead, 1750–1860
Esther Wohlgemut
ROMANTIC COSMOPOLITANISM
David Worrall
THE POLITICS OF ROMANTIC THEATRICALITY, 1787–1832
The Road to the Stage
Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print
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Romantic Hellenism and
Women Writers
Noah Comet
© Noah Comet 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013978-1-137-30497-1
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ISBN 978-1-349-45465-5 ISBN 978-1-137-31622-6 (eBook)
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For Noelle & Nolan
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Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgments x
Introduction: From Monumental Fragments to Fragmented
Monumentalism 1
1 Hellenism and Women’s Print Culture:
“The Merit of Brevity” 15
2 Lucy Aikin and the Evolution of Greece
“Through Infamy to Fame” 49
3 Felicia Hemans and the “Exquisite Remains”
of Modern Greece 68
1 England’s “ancient” future 72
2 Timeless v. Placeless: the verdict on Winckelmann 77
3 Coda: Hemans, gender, and the “classical” poet;
the reception of Modern Greece 84
4 Letitia Landon and the Second Thoughts of Romantic
Hellenism 90
1 “The Thessalian Fountain” 94
2 “Town and Harbour of Ithaca” 100
3 “The Banquet of Aspasia and Pericles” 105
4 Conclusion 110
Conclusion: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Reception of
Romantic Women’s Hellenism 113
Appendixes: Poetry by Letitia Landon 121
Appendix A: “The Thessalian Fountain” 121
Appendix B: “Town and Harbour of Ithaca” 122
Appendix C: “The Banquet of Aspasia and Pericles” 124
Notes 126
Bibliography 153
Index 165
vii
List of Illustrations
1.1 La Belle Assemblée, or, Bell’s Court and Fashionable
Magazine. The original title-page, with its
Egyptian iconography. 21
1.2 Detail from the “Egyptian Room,” in Thomas Hope’s
Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807). 22
1.3 La Belle Assemblée, or Court and Fashionable Magazine.
Redesigned title-page after Bell’s departure from the
journal in 1821. 23
1.4 The Three Graces. Marble sculpture by Antonio Canova,
1813–16. Image courtesy of the Victoria and
Albert Museum. 24
1.5 “Private Concert Costume,” from the Court Magazine
(September 1826). The caption reads: “The hair is
arranged in the Lesbian style; the curls very full, long
and large in front; and the Sappho knot is separated
from the front hair by a rich diadem, or regal fillet,
composed of jewels, or wrought gold.” 38
1.6 “Hell Broke Loose, or, The Murder of Louis,” W. Dent,
1793 (image courtesy of the Library of Congress).
This image depicts creatures much like the classical
Furies or perhaps Harpies swarming around the
guillotine as the king is executed. Cf. Burke’s Reflections.
A similar image entitled “La tête de Marie-Antoinette,
ajustée au corps d’un animal ailé” (anon. 1792)
represented Marie Antoinette as a Harpy-like creature. 42
1.7 Engraving of the Medici Venus by Jan de Bisschop,
c.1669. Such illustrations were commonly reprinted
in English magazines and treatises throughout the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 44
1.8 Fashion plate from the Lady’s Monthly Museum,
July 1813. Showing “the Tyrian glare of ‘olden’
time”; the Evening dress (standing figure) is
“of real Grecian design”. 46
viii
List of Illustrations ix
1.9 Fashion plate from the Lady’s Monthly Museum
(May 1814). The hair on the standing figure is
à la Grecque and on the seated figure “partly Roman,
partly Grecian.” 47
4.1 Town and Harbour of Ithaca. The image from
Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrapbook, 1837 that was
accompanied by Landon’s poem of the same title. 101