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Author Havard, John Owen, author.

Title Late Romanticism and the end of politics : Byron, Mary Shelley and the last men / John Owen Havard, Binghamton University
Published Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023
©2023

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 234 pages) : illustrations
Series Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 140
Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 140.
Contents Cover -- Half-title page -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: Where Will It End? -- Chapter 1 The End of Politics and the End of the World -- Chapter 2 The Last Whigs -- Chapter 3 Byron, Brougham, and the End of Slavery -- Chapter 4 "Crowns in the Dust": The Ends of Politics in The Last Man -- Chapter 5 New Worlds: Frankenstein, The Island, and the Ends of the Earth -- Coda: Don Juan and the Ends of Literature -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary "In the late Romantic age, demands for political change converged with thinking about the end of the world. This book examines writings by Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and their circle that imagined the end, from poems by Byron that pictured fallen empires, sinking islands, and dying stars to the making and unmaking of populations in Frankenstein and The Last Man. These works intersected with and enclosed reflections upon brewing political changes. By imagining political dynasties, slavery, parliament, and English law reaching an end, writers challenged liberal visions of the political future that viewed the basis of governance as permanently settled. The prospect of volcanic eruptions and biblical deluges, meanwhile, pointed towards new political worlds, forged in the ruins of this one. These visions of coming to an end acquire added resonance in our own time, as political and planetary end-times converge once again. John Owen Havard is Assistant Professor of English at Binghamton University. He is the author of Disaffected Parties: Political Estrangement and the Making of English Literature, 1760-1830 (2019). His articles and essays on the Byron circle, party politics, political emotion, and the future of democracy have appeared in ELH, Nineteenth-Century Literature, The Byron Journal, The New Rambler and Public Books"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on April 13, 2023)
Subject English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Romanticism -- Great Britain
End of the world in literature.
Politics in literature.
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Political and social views.
Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century
Authors, English -- Political and social views
End of the world in literature
English literature
Politics and literature
Politics in literature
Romanticism
Great Britain
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Literary criticism
Literary criticism.
Critiques littéraires.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2022038079
ISBN 9781009289160
1009289160
9781009289184
1009289187