From Abolition and Allegory through Madness and Monsters to Vision and Vampires, each entry is accompanied by an in-depth description of the term’s direct meaning and connotations in relation to its usage and thought in British literary culture. Collectively, the terms represent a time capsule of the ideas and concerns that shaped the literature of an age of revolution, social and political reconstruction, impassioned individualism, and probing subjectivity. In introducing and defining the terms that characterized the era, Romanticism: Keywords is an indispensable resource for developing a conceptual understanding of Romantic aesthetics – and provides deep insights into the political, social, and cultural climate of one of the most expressive periods of Western literary history.
Frederick Burwick is Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. The author or editor of 30 books and more than 140 scholarly articles, Burwick is also co-editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Romanticism (2012). Other recent publications include Romantic Drama: Acting and Reacting (2009) and Playing to the Crowd, London Popular Theatre, 1780-1830 (2011).