Epic
Britain's Heroic Muse 1790-1910
Published in December 2008
Book
Hardback
752 pages
978-0-19-923298-7 (ISBN)
Description
This book is the first to provide a connected history of epic poetry in Britain between the French Revolution and the First World War. Although epic is widely held to have been shouldered aside by the novel, if not invalidated in advance by modernity, in fact the genre was practised without interruption across the long nineteenth century by nearly every prominent Romantic and Victorian poet, and shoals of ambitious poetasters into the bargain. Poets kept the epic alive by revising its conventions to meet an overlapping series of changing realities: insurgent democracy, Napoleonic war, the rise of class consciousness and repeated reform of the franchise, challenges posed by scientific advance to religious belief and cherished notions of the human, the evolution of a postnationalist and eventually imperialist identity for Britain as the world's superpower. Each of these developments called on nineteenth-century epic to do what the genre had always done: affirm the unity of its sponsoring culture through a large utterance that both acknowledged the distinctive flowering of the modern and affirmed its rootedness in tradition.The best writers answered this call by figuring Britain's self-renewal and the genre's as versions of one another.
In passing Herbert Tucker notices scores of mediocre congeners (and worse), so as to show where the challenge of a given decade fell and suggest what lay at stake. The background these lesser works provide throws into relief what the book stresses in extended discussions of several dozen major works: an unbroken history of daring experimentation in which circumspect, inventive, worried epoists engaged because the genre and the age alike demanded it.
In passing Herbert Tucker notices scores of mediocre congeners (and worse), so as to show where the challenge of a given decade fell and suggest what lay at stake. The background these lesser works provide throws into relief what the book stresses in extended discussions of several dozen major works: an unbroken history of daring experimentation in which circumspect, inventive, worried epoists engaged because the genre and the age alike demanded it.
Reviews / Votes
This is a marvellous book, epic in theme and ambition, epic in size, but thoroughly justified in its monumentality. Isobel Armstrong, Victorian Studies Tucker's Epic is by any measure a great achievement; for students of Victorian poetry, it is the book of the year-or more. Tucker offers a richly arresting narrative of the passage from the Enlightenment to Modernism ... Offering an unmatched analytical portrait of nineteenth-century epic, and cast in humane, engaging prose, this book advances a renovated literary history that we all have need of hearing. Andrew Stauffer, Victorian Poetry I urge Romanticists and Victorianists to pick up this study of Britain's Heroic Muse - unquestionably the definitive book on nineteenth-century epic, noteworthy for its subtle analysis of the intersection of historical context and poetic form. Linda H. Peterson, Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies True to his subject, [Tucker] narrates epic's vicissitudes through the century as though it were a battle landscape, in analogy-rich language with no middle flight, where epic poems can be airlifted in and out of cultural embargoes ... crucial to its value are the little-known poets who inhabit this book by the score. Lee Scrivner, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century Epic recovers a continuous, prodigious, overshadowed tradition of writing...and this recovery is stunning... Epic reveals the concurrent histories of other 19th-century genres, particularly the novel...Tucker's positively relentless blend of erudition, colloquialism, and cheek makes descriptions of even the most hackneyed epics tough to put down. Jonathan Farina, The Wordsworth Circle Professor Herbert Tucker argues a coherent case in this, his own epic tome...Tucker's deft exposition is so refreshing that one cries for more. Robert Giddings, Tribune Tucker's frequently punning, alliterative prose, while it requires close attention, never bogs down in forbidding jargon, and even comes ornamented with - dare one say it? - a sense of humor. Readers will find much to ponder. The Little Professor Tucker's study is an immensely learned and comprehensively researched book that is a valuable source for both the average reader and the specialist Torsten Caeners, Anglistik astonishing scholarshipMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
Scholars and students of nineteenth-century poetry.
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 46.6 mm
Weight
1240 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-923298-7 (9780199232987)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
11/2012
1st Edition
Oxford University Press
€50.12
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Content
1. The Very Idea: Epic in the Head ; 2. On Calliope's Jalopy: Epic Rebuilt 1790-1800 ; 3. Under Correction: Epic Conscripted 1800-1805 ; 4. In Expiation: Epic Atonement 1805-1815 ; 5. in Style: Epic Plush 1815-1820 ; 6. To the Ending Doom: Epic Apocalypse 1820-1830 ; 7. In Session: Forensic Epic 1830-1840 ; 8. There and Back: Emigrant Epic 1840-1850 ; 9. On Impulse: Spasmodic Epic 1850-1860 ; 10. In Plight of Troth: Mythological Epidc 1860-1870 ; 11. For All the World: Eclectic Epic 1870-1895 ; 12. At Long Last: Edwardian Epic 1895-1910 ; Bibliography of Poems Cited ; Secondary Work Cited