Ebook: The Problem of Poetry in the Romantic Period

This is a lively introduction of the way in which several of the major British Romantic poets confronted the writing and theorizing of poetry. The question "What is a poet?" is asked and answered with great frequency and variety; invariably there is an underlying sense of unease, often in the shadow, as it were, of Wordsworth's lines: "We poets in our youth begin in gladness; / But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." The apparent confidence of the manifestos is undermined by the self-doubts of much of the poetry, ranging from Coleridge to John Clare.