Romanticism and the Gothic : Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation

Rating:
Summary: A scholarship/syllabus gem.
Review: Gamer's work offers a rare combination of intelligence and subversion. This readable, well-researched, brilliantly aruged book rightly turns most previously held ideas about "high Romantic literature" and popular culture on their heads. His thesis, that revered Romantic writers appropriated low-brow Gothic culture whilst denying it in order to elevate their own stature and reinforce their own valuations of "the Romantic" is eeriely applicable to the battles within our own culture today. I plan to incorporate this in my own teaching; it is a work whose implications far exceed the period which it addresses. It is also a refreshing departure from commonly turgid and overwrought academic writing. Bravo.

Rating:
Summary: Lucid and very, very readable
Review: This is the most concise account of the shared origins of Gothic and Romantic I've read, and I've read several. The sections on publishing and on periodical reception are, on the whole, beautifully done. While the chapter on Joanna Baillie is an important contribution to what we know of that understudied dramatist, the chapter on Lyrical Ballads is without question the book's centerpiece.