The Romantic Literary Lecture in Britain

Description

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the literary lecture arrived on London's cultural scene as an influential critical medium and popular social event. It flourished for two decades in the hands of the period's most prominent lecturers: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Thelwall, Thomas Campbell, and William Hazlitt. Lecturers aimed to shape auditors' reading habits, burnish their own professional profiles, and establish a literary canon. Auditors wielded their own considerable influence, since their sustained approbation was necessary to a lecturer's success, and independent series could collapse midway if attendance waned. Two chapters are therefore devoted to the auditors, whose creative responses to what they heard often constituted cultural works in their own right. Auditors wrote poems and letters about lecture performances, acted as patrons to lecturers, and hosted dinners and conversation parties that followed these events. Prominent auditors included John Keats, Mary Russell Mitford, Henry Crabb Robinson, Catherine Maria Fanshawe, and Lady Charlotte Bury. The Romantic public literary lecture is a fascinating cultural phenomenon in its own right, but understanding the medium has significant implications for some of the period's most important literary criticism, such as Coleridge's readings of Shakespeare and Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets (1818). The book's two main aims are to chart the emergence of the literary lecture as a popular medium and to develop a critical approach to these events by drawing on an interdisciplinary discussion about how to treat historical speaking performances. Cover The Romantic Literary Lecture in Britain Copyright Dedication Preface Acknowledgments Contents List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations 1: Approaching the Lecture Room THE CRITICAL FIELD OF ROMANTIC-ERA PUBLIC LECTURING ENGAGING IN SPECULATION: APPROACHING HISTORICAL SPEAKING PERFORMANCES MAPPING ROMANTIC-ERA LITERARY LECTURING 2: Coleridge the Lecturer, A Disappearing Act COLERIDGE AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION: A STAR IS (RE)BORN SPENDING TIME: THE 1811–12 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE AND MILTON THE PEDAGOGY OF PERMANENCE: “FIXED PRINCIPLES” AND EXTEMPORANEITY SUSPENDING DISBELIEF: HAMLET IN THE LECTURE ROOM HAPPY ENDINGS: ROMEO AND JULIET 3: John Thelwall’s School of Eloquence A DEFENSE OF “ORAL ELOQUENCE” PHYS ED FOR POETS APPLIED POETICS LOCUTION, LOCUTION, LOCUTION 4: Thomas Campbell, Scholar-Poet THE CASE AGAINST CAMPBELL PERFORMING ENLIGHTENMENT LITERARY LECTURING’S AFTERLIVES: “A GREAT LONDON UNIVERSITY” 5: Acting Like an Author: Hazlitt’s Lectures on the English Poets JACOB’S DREAM: FATHERS, SONS, AND THE WORK OF MOURNING LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS: AN ELEGY DON’T SPEAK: THE CASE FOR AUTHORSHIP ACTING LIKE AN AUTHOR: HAZLITT’SDELIVERY STYLE 6: The Thrush in the Theater: Keats at the Surrey Institution LISTENING LESSONS HEARING HAZLITT’S LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS POETRY DEMONSTRATION: “O THOU WHOSE FACE HATH FELT THE WINTER’S WIND” APPLIED LISTENING: THE LATER POEMS AND LETTERS 7: The Last Word: Women in the Romantic Lecture Room “PHILOSOPHY IN FASHION” AND OTHER STRICTURES ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD: THE RIVAL MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: THE APPRENTICE LADY CHARLOTTE BURY: PATRONAGE AND PROSE CATHERINE MARIA FANSHAWE’S CONVERSATION POEMS PRIVATE LECTURES References Index