The Circle of Our Vision: Dante's Presence in English Romantic PoetryThe sudden and spectacular growth in Dante's popularity in England at the end of the eighteenth century was immensely influential for English writers of the period. But the impact of Dante on English writers has rarely been analysed and its history has been little understood. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Blake, and Wordsworth all wrote or painted while Dante's work - its style, project, and achievement commanded their attention and provoked their disagreement. The Circle of Our Vision discusses each of these writers in detail, assessing the nature of their engagement with the Divine Comedy and the consequences for their own work. It explores how Romantic poets understood Dante, what they valued in his poetry and why, and sets them in the context of contemporary commentators, translators, and illustrators (including Henry Fuseli and John Flaxman), both in England and Europe. Romantic readings of the Divine Comedy are shown to disturb our own ideas about Dante, which are based on Victorian and Modernist assumptions. An important contribution to Romantic and Dante scholarship, The Circle of Our Vision also presents a reconsideration of the concept of 'influence' in general, using the example of Dante's presence in Romantic poetry to challenge Harold Bloom's belief that the relations between poets are invariably a fight to the death. |
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Page 161
... light ' of Rousseau's narrative in The Triumph of Life , ' waned in the coming light ' but can still be sensed : ' So knew I in that light's severe excess The presence of that shape which on the stream Moved , as I moved along the ...
... light ' of Rousseau's narrative in The Triumph of Life , ' waned in the coming light ' but can still be sensed : ' So knew I in that light's severe excess The presence of that shape which on the stream Moved , as I moved along the ...
Page 179
... light ' — a passage in which Shelley combines the dissolution of thought and the veiling of planets in light . The shape resembles Dante's rising sun . Her feet ' blot | The thoughts of him who gazed on them ' : As Day upon the ...
... light ' — a passage in which Shelley combines the dissolution of thought and the veiling of planets in light . The shape resembles Dante's rising sun . Her feet ' blot | The thoughts of him who gazed on them ' : As Day upon the ...
Page 180
... light but not destroyed . Just as a planet survives being hidden in light , the mind is swamped but not eradicated by the visions it experi- ences . The clarity of perception that seemed the prerequisite of vision continues within the ...
... light but not destroyed . Just as a planet survives being hidden in light , the mind is swamped but not eradicated by the visions it experi- ences . The clarity of perception that seemed the prerequisite of vision continues within the ...
Contents
Illustrating Dante | 39 |
Symbols in | 68 |
Morti li morti e i vivi parean | 119 |
Copyright | |
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allegory appear argues attention Beatrice becomes Blake Blake's Blake's illustrations Boyd Byron Cambridge canto Cary Cary's translation Coleridge Coleridge's Commedia continues contrast creates Critical damned Dante Alighieri Dante and Virgil Dante's Dantean divine Divine Comedy Don Juan Earthly Paradise English Essays eternal exile eyes Fall of Hyperion Farinata feelings Flaxman's Friend Fuseli's gentleness Heaven Hell Henry Fuseli human Hunt's ibid imagination implies Inferno Italian John John Keats Juan's judgement Keats Keats's Leila light lines London McGann Milton narrator nature numbers Oxford Paolo and Francesca passage passion pause perception poem poet poetic poetry political Purgatorio reader reading reveals rhyme Rimini Rollins Romantic Rousseau S. T. Coleridge Sapegno Schlegel seems sense Shelley Shelley's sorrow soul stanza Story of Rimini sublime symbolic sympathy T. S. Eliot terza rima thought tion Toynbee Triumph truth Ugolino Virgil vision vols waking dream Warton William Blake Wordsworth writing