Robert Pollok's The Course of Time and Literary Theodicy in the Romantic Age

Rezensionen / Stimmen

The Course of Time was one of the most popular poems in the century after its publication. But in twentieth-century criticism, it almost entirely disappeared. Deryl Davis's ground-breaking book, the first to focus on the poem, explains why it once mattered - and why it should matter more today.

Crawford Gribben, Professor of History, Queen's University Belfast

Now almost forgotten, Robert Pollok's The Course of Time (1827) was an enormously influential best seller in its day, sometimes compared to Milton's Paradise Lost. Deryl Davis' new book examines its importance within Scottish Romanticism and the theology and literature of its time and why it was forgotten later in the nineteenth century. Davis' work makes an important contribution to the field of Romanticism and to the religious and literary world of early nineteenth-century Scotland.

David Jasper, Emeritus Professor, Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow

This is a culturally sensitive reassessment of one the big poetic texts in Scotland and well beyond during the early nineteenth century. Discarded and forgotten but now disinterred, Pollok and The Course of Time have much that is worth pondering for a readership interested in literature and theology in the twenty-first century.

Gerard Carruthers, Francis Hutcheson Professor of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow