Jonathan Wordsworth

.....wonderful powers of reading the text....students who want to get close to the poetry could still hardly do better'. Keith Hanley, Lancaster.'..newly published work by a major critic;...a necessary volume, one that should be in all university libraries.' Michael O'Neill, Durham.'The Invisible World' contains ten chapters on important aspects of Romantic Poetry. There are detailed assessments of the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats with references to Shelley and Byron. Central 'Romantic' questions are addressed such as: What did Romanticism consist of? What was the Romantic Imagination? How did Wordsworth engage with the French Revolution? How did Wordsworth engage with women? What was the importance of Ossian and Burns? How does an eccentric writer like Blake fit into 'Romanticism'? What do the great Romantic poets have in common? How far is Coleridge indebted to Cowper in 'Frost at Midnight' and how does his own poem aspire beyond the limits of Cowper's vision? What was the Excursion and why is it important? How is Wordsworth's poetry 'transformative'? What was particular about Keats's Imagination? How can Blake be said to have had the first theory of Imagination?

The Romanticism that emerged after the American and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789 represented a new flowering of the imagination and the spirit, and a celebration of the soul of humanity with its capacity for love. This extraordinary collection sets the acknowledged genius of poems such as Blake's 'Tyger', Coleridge's 'Khubla Khan' and Shelley's 'Ozymandias' alongside verse from less familiar figures and women poets such as Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson. We also see familiar poets in an unaccustomed light, as Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley demonstrate their comic skills, while Coleridge, Keats and Clare explore the Gothic and surreal.