BRITISH ROMANTIC VERSE SATIRE
Author(s):
OSTROM, HANS ANSGAR
Degree:
PH.D.
Year:
1982
Pages:
00261
Institution:
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS; 0029
Source:
DAI, 44, no. 01A, (1982): 0177
Abstract:
Schiller thought that two genres dominated the literature of the Romantic (or
"sentimental," in his terms) period: elegy and satire. Despite this important place of
satire in his characterization of the period, and despite the recognition that specific
satires have received, the canon of British Romantic verse satire has been slighted. My
study seeks to explore and in some cases challenge the prejudices that have caused
this situation, and it attempts to define a discrete Romantic strain of verse satire. The
characteristics of this strain include the following: conflict between temperamental
sympathy and aggression; political dissent and radicalism; energy and heroism as satiric
norms; the decline of "the formal strain" of Augustan verse satire, which is replaced by
idiosyncratic and eclectic allusiveness; and the blending of satire with such modes as
comic poetry (Burns and Byron), realism (George Crabbe) and prophecy (Blake and
Shelley). The first chapter discusses these characteristics in detail. I devote subsequent
chapters to Burns, Crabbe, Blake, and Byron, respectively. In the last chapter I discuss
the satire of Shelley, Moore, and Hunt, as well as the "satiric milieu" of the period, in
order to show the extent to which satire remained a vital form of public discourse in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Ultimately, I believe that the achievements
of Burns, Crabbe, Blake, Byron, and Shelley in satire demonstrate that the British
Romantics were as much a "revisionary company" as they were a "visionary company"
(Harold Bloom's term). That is, to envision new social, political, and imaginative orders,
they often felt the need first to sweep away old ones. Verse satire frequently served this
need, as evidenced by such works as "Holy Willie's Prayer," The Village, Tiriel and The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Don Juan and The Vision of Judgment, Peter Bell the Third
and the Mask of Anarchy.

SUBJECT(S) 
Descriptor:
LITERATURE, ENGLISH 
Accession No:
AAG8311980