Romantic Ideology Unmasked: The Mentally Constructed Tyrannies in Dramas of William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Joanna Baillie"Romantic drama is politically charged and ideologically based. The plays mediate economic issues, gender relations, class struggles, family dissolutions, political revolutions, and religious skepticism. By unmasking the embedded layers of ideology and revealing the various fictions that ideology perpetrates as truths, Romantic Ideology Unmasked reveals the mental processes on which romantic drama's temporal and spatial issues - both historical and social - rest. The meaning of the drama thus lies in the variety of tyrannies they symbolize, or inscribe. Readers actively participate in the process engendered by the plays: they unmask the ideology operating at their foundations by revealing the obvious and submerged constraints on mental freedom." "In William Wordsworth's The Borderers, political tyranny and the ideology of revolution, specifically spawned by the French in 1789, are privileged above the other embedded layers of tyrannies and historically based revolutions, including the Barons' Revolt of 1258 and the English Civil War. Both play and prose radically question the ideology that prompts the revolution-restoration cycle, a delusional and entrapping process." "Lord Byron's Manfred and Werner explore tyrannies engendered by familial and social conflicts as they criticize reforms instigated in Regency England. While Manfred confirms that it is not difficult to extirpate the curses and inheritances of the past once humankind is freed from the mental tyrannies it inflicts upon itself, Werner reveals the horrors of enslavement to class, name, race, and title - all inheritances humanly contrived to enslave others." "Religious and political tyranny are blatant in Percy Shelley's The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound. These plays also expose an ideology based on bifurcated thinking, uncontested and unchanged, which undermines any efforts at social and moral reform. The Cenci dramatically portrays an aristocratic family and an Italian Renaissance society enslaved in the tragedies produced by an ideology of dichotomous thinking. Prometheus Unbound offers a presentation of liberation from such an enslaving ideology." "Character rivalries and political intrigue in Joanna Baillie's Count Basil and De Monfort dramatize a study in early-nineteenth-century gender relations and female emancipation. Baillie's dramas question a mental structuration that accepts as absolute and fixed truth a gender relationship that exists oppositionally. The plays demonstrate the mental forms of oppression to which women were subjected and from which material forms of economic and physical constraints emanated." "Romantic writers transpose ideological struggles into dramatic and political terms, rendering mediations of the same collective mentality, the same social structure in different interpretive frames. In considering romantic drama as a collective and mental process, we liberate the interpretive possibilities the plays offer."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
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Page 81
... count . A soldier of the war and the only other heir in the family dispute , Ulric brings these two levels of combat together.57 Ulric is the late count's grandson and Werner's son . Reared by the late count following Werner's exile ...
... count . A soldier of the war and the only other heir in the family dispute , Ulric brings these two levels of combat together.57 Ulric is the late count's grandson and Werner's son . Reared by the late count following Werner's exile ...
Page 135
... Count Basil is set in Mantua during the sixteenth century , a time and place that seem far removed from British politics of the 1790s . The purported focus of the play is the detaining of Basil's forces from participation in the battle ...
... Count Basil is set in Mantua during the sixteenth century , a time and place that seem far removed from British politics of the 1790s . The purported focus of the play is the detaining of Basil's forces from participation in the battle ...
Page 208
... Count Basil ( character ) , 135-43 , 146 , 149 , 151-52 , 155–56 , 158-61 ; Count Freberg , 139 , 147 , 150 , 152– 54 ; Count of Maldo , 147 ; Count Wolvar , 147 ; Countess of Albini , 140 , 145-46 , 158 ; Countess Freberg , 139 , 147 ...
... Count Basil ( character ) , 135-43 , 146 , 149 , 151-52 , 155–56 , 158-61 ; Count Freberg , 139 , 147 , 150 , 152– 54 ; Count of Maldo , 147 ; Count Wolvar , 147 ; Countess of Albini , 140 , 145-46 , 158 ; Countess Freberg , 139 , 147 ...
Contents
Foreword | 9 |
Introduction | 17 |
William Wordsworths Borderers | 26 |
Copyright | |
4 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
actions argues Beatrice Beatrice's bifurcated thinking Borderers Byron's Plays Byron's Political Cambridge claims Coleridge collective mentality conflicts Count Basil created crime Critical cultural depicts disguised edited English Romantic enslavement Erdman Essays father female feminine feminist feudal fictions France Freberg freedom French Revolution Gabor gender Godwin Hays historical human human-created humankind ideology inheritance Jane Joanna Baillie Journal Keats-Shelley latent latent content Letters Lord Byron Manfred's Marmaduke Mary Wollstonecraft masculine mental structuration Mental Theatre mind Monfort moral Napoleon Noble numbers oppression Orsino Oswald paradigm passions patriarchal Percy Bysshe Shelley poetic poets polemics Prometheus Unbound prose radical readers reform Regency England reifies reveals revolutionary Rezenvelt Rights of Woman Roger Ingpen roles romantic drama Romanticism Rosinberg scene sexual Siegendorf social society spirit stage Stralenheim Studies in Romanticism submerged surface-level theater thought tion Tragedy tyranny tyrant Ulric University of Salzburg Victoria Vindication Whig William Wordsworth Wollstonecraft women Wordsworth Circle York