Hermann Fischer's lively and original 1991 study of Romantic verse narrative traces in comprehensive detail the origins and development of this poetic form in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It brings together the longer epic verse tales of Scott, Byron and Southey and the more lyrical forms of Romantic narrative poetry, thus presenting familiar poems such as Shelley's 'Alastor' and Keats's 'The Eve of St Agnes' in the revealing but neglected context of the genre and its history. Professor Fischer addresses the question of genre from a viewpoint that is both theoretical and historical, and his study also proves illuminating in many areas of Romantic literature, covering issues such as the role of the medieval revival and the decline of neoclassicism, the relative importance of popular and more literary sources, and questions of changing taste and the reading public. This translation, extensively revised and updated, makes Hermann Fischer's acclaimed study available for the first time in English.

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction; Part I: The Genre and its Historical Context; 1. Genre definitions; 2. The initial situation; Part II. The History of the Romantic Tale in Verse: Poets, Works, Critics and the Public: 3. Early forms; 4. The establishment of the genre by Sir Walter Scott, its fashionable period and imitations by other poets; 5. 'The postscript of the Augustans' and the opposite of the romance; 6. Ramification and dissolution; 7. The subsequent fate of the genre; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.