DOCSLIB.ORG

Matthew Leporati

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Matthew Leporati Matthew Leporati English Department 9 Graywood Road 541 W Dealy Hall Port Washington, NY 11050 Fordham University Phone: 917-836-0899 Bronx, NY 10458 Email: [email protected] EDUCATION Ph.D., English Literature, Fordham University, NY, 2014. Dissertation: “Romantic-era Epic Poetry and the Mission of Empire.” Committee: Sarah Zimmerman (chair), John Bugg, Frank Boyle. Influenced by the long shadow of Wordsworth’s Prelude, we are used to reading Romantic-era epic poems as explorations of the sublime mysteries of the human mind. My project, however, argues that they both reflect and interrogate the rise of British missionary and imperial activity across the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I reveal that authors as diverse as Robert Southey, Ann Yearsley, and Thomas Beck turned to the epic genre both to support and to critique missionary work, imperial expansion, and the vexed possibility of harmony between these endeavors. Examining this understudied history of the British epic, I demonstrate how canonical poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, and Lord Byron also draw on the resources of this genre in order to raise their voices more critically against aspects of empire while still remaining influenced by some of the assumptions of British imperialism and its evangelical turn. M.A., English Literature, Fordham University, NY, 2007. B.A. (Summa Cum Laude) St. John’s University, Jamaica, NY, 2005. TEACHING EXPERIENCE “Romantic Literature and Dissent” Fordham University, Spring 2015 This English core course of my own design studies how authors of the Romantic period drew on the climate of religious and political dissent in order to challenge dominant ideologies. Reading diverse writers from the expanded canon, including Ann Yearsley, Robert Southey, and Olaudah Equiano, students discuss and write about the challenges that literature can launch against notions of class, race, empire, gender, and more. “The Epic and Its Echoes” Fordham University, Fall 2014 I designed this English core course to encourage students to explore the classical epic and its legacy across multiple art forms. My students consider classical epics side-by-side with lyric poems, paintings, sculptures, and films that draw upon the epic tradition. They also read excerpts of modern and understudied epics, including works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ann Yearsley, and Derek Walcott. Their writing and revision is central to our discussion of the “conversation” between these diverse works of literature. Leporati CV 2 “Literature and Resistance” Suffolk County Community College, Fall 2013 Examining works by a diverse selection of authors (including Mary Wollstonecraft, Phillis Wheatley, Lord Byron, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Virginia Woolf, and Jamaica Kincaid), students learn to analyze individual works of literature, make connections among ostensibly disparate texts, and recognize the relationship between literature and the world outside the classroom. I designed this class to pay special attention to writing and revision and to incorporate online discussion that extends our classroom conversations. “Revolutionary Writers” Fordham University, Fall 2011 An English core course of my own design that examines the impact of the historical context of the Romantic era on its literature. Through readings of Wordsworth, Blake, Percy and Mary Shelley, Charlotte Smith, John Clare (and many others), students considered the various ways that the revolutionary era both established and anticipated modern ideas such as ecology, vegetarianism, and feminism. A particular emphasis is placed on student writing and revision. Composition II Fordham University, 2008-2015 An intensive course in expository writing that focuses on grammar, logic, and rhetoric, covering research methods, revision skills, and argumentation. The small course size permits in-depth class discussion of texts, including student essays, pop culture texts, and literature. Composition I Fordham University, 2009-2014 This course teaches basic writing and grammar to students under-prepared for college writing. It stresses reading comprehension, grammar presentations, and the process of revision, and it teaches the basics of essay structure, research, and logical argumentation. Writing Center Tutor Fordham University, 2005–2008 I worked with students individually on their writing, guiding them through the process of revision. Duties included preparing grammar worksheets, organizing and conducting presentations for new tutors, and organizing and running workshops for students. Special experience in working with non-traditional and EFL students. PUBLICATIONS “Ann Yearsley’s ‘Brutus’ and the Evangelical Epic Poem,” Studies in Romanticism, under review. “William Blake’s Perspectives: Teaching Romanticism in the Community College Classroom,” The CEA Critic, under review. “Secular Evangelism in Sydney Owenson’s The Missionary and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam,” The Keats-Shelley Journal, under review. Review of Romantic Literature: Texts, Contexts, Connections by John Gilroy. Romanticism 19.3 (October, 2013): 333-335. “‘Authority from Heaven’: Robert Southey’s Madoc and Epic Christian Imperialism.” European Romantic Review (ERR) 25.2 (March, 2014): 161-180. Leporati CV 3 PRESENTATIONS “Social Class, Conversion, and Colonialism in Ann Yearsley’s ‘Brutus.’” British Women Writers Conference, New York. 2015. Roundtable Chair: “Comparative Peer Responses.” Literature and Creative Writing Pedagogies in Community Colleges, New York. 2014. “The Romantic-era Epic Poem and the Mission of Empire.” Wordsworth Summer Conference, Grasmere, UK. 2011. “Innovations of Heroism in the Romantic Epic.” International Conference on Romanticism, Lubbock, TX. 2010. “Writing Self and City in the Romantic Epics of Wordsworth and Blake.” International Conference on Romanticism, New York. 2009. “Historical Self-Representation in Lord Byron and Felicia Hemans.” Wordsworth Summer Conference, Grasmere, UK. 2009. “Romantic Doubts in Victorian Poetry: Browning’s ‘Childe Roland’ and Wordsworth’s Prelude.” Fordham Graduate English Association Conference, New York. 2008. “‘Creator and Receiver Both’”: The Role of History in Wordsworth’s Prelude.” Wordsworth Summer Conference, Grasmere, UK. 2008. “The Cinematic Trick Shot and Spectatorship in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.” Film/Literature Association Conference, Kansas City. 2007. AWARDS Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship, Fordham University, 2014-2015 English Department Summer Award, Fordham University, 2012 Teaching Fellowship, Fordham University, 2010-2011 Teaching Assistantship, Fordham University, 2008-2014 Graduate Assistantship, Fordham University, 2005-2008 Presidential Tuition Scholarship, Fordham University, 2005-2014 PROFESSIONAL SERVICE Outreach Coordinator for the New York City Romanticism Group, 2014-2015 Higher Education Opportunity (HEOP) English Department Coordinator, 2013-2015 Research Assistant for the Joseph Johnson Letterbook (John Bugg, editor. Oxford University Press, 2014) Editorial Assistant for Hart Crane’s The Bridge: An Annotated Edition (Lawrence Kramer, editor. Fordham University Press, 2011) Founder, Epic Poetry Graduate Student Reading Group, Fordham University, 2013 Coordinator, Nineteenth-Century Graduate Student Reading Group, Fordham University, 2013 Mentor, English Department Teaching Practicum, Fordham University, 2009-2014 Mentor, English Graduate Student Mentorship Program, Fordham University, 2009-2014 Leporati CV 4 TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS British Romanticism Epic Poetry Nineteenth-century British Culture British Literature and Empire Victorian Poetry The British Novel Writing Pedagogy LANGUAGES French (reading) German (reading) Italian (reading and speaking) PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS Modern Language Association North American Society for the Study of Romanticism North American Victorian Studies Association College English Association REFERENCES Sarah Zimmerman, Professor of English, Fordham University [email protected] Frank Boyle, Professor of English, Fordham University [email protected] John Bugg, Associate Professor of English, Fordham University [email protected] Colin Clarke, Assistant Academic Chair; Associate Professor of English, Suffolk County Community College [email protected] Moshe Gold, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Rose Hill Writing Program, Fordham University [email protected] .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • On the Rise and Progress of Popular Disaffection,” in Es- Says, Moral and Political, 2 Vols
    Notes Introduction 1. Robert Southey, “On the Rise and Progress of Popular Disaffection,” in Es- says, Moral and Political, 2 vols. (1817; London: John Murray, 1832), II, 82. The identity of Junius remained a mystery, and even Edmund Burke was suspected. For an argument that he was Sir Philip Francis, see Alvar Ellegård, Who Was Junius? (The Hague, 1962). 2. Byron, “The Vision of Judgment” in Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann and Barry Weller, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–92), VI, 309–45. 3. M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Ro- mantic Literature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), p. 13. 4. See Anne K. Mellor, English Romantic Irony (Cambridge: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1980). 5. Jerome J. McGann, The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 23–24. 6. Jerome J. McGann, Towards a Literature of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 39. 7. McGann, Towards a Literature of Knowledge, p. 39. 8. McGann, “Literary Pragmatics and the Editorial Horizon,” in Devils and Angels: Textual Editing and Literary Theory, ed. Philip Cohen (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1991), pp. 1–21 (13). 9. Marilyn Butler, “Satire and the Images of Self in the Romantic Period: The Long Tradition of Hazlitt’s Liber Amoris,” in English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, ed. Claude Rawson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 209–25 (209). 10. Stuart Curran, Poetic Form and British Romanticism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 12–13. 11. Gary Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, 1789–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
    [Show full text]
  • 08 North Italy 1816
    1 BYRON’S CORRESPONDENCE AND JOURNALS 08: FROM NORTH ITALY, NOVEMBER 1816 Edited by Peter Cochran Work in progress, with frequent updates [indicated]. Letters not in the seventeen main files may be found in those containing the correspondences Byron / Annbella, Byron / Murray, Byron / Hobhouse, Byron / Moore, Byron / Scott, Byron / Kinnaird, Byron / The Shelleys , or Byron / Hoppner . UPDATED November 2010. Abbreviations B.: Byron; Mo: Moore; H.: Hobhouse; K.: Kinnaird; Mu.: Murray; Sh.: Shelley 1922: Lord Byron’s Correspondence Chiefly with Lady Melbourne, Mr Hobhouse, The Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, and P.B.Shelley (2 vols., John Murray 1922). BB: Byron’s Bulldog: The Letters of John Cam Hobhouse to Lord Byron, ed. Peter W.Graham (Columbus Ohio 1984) BLJ: Byron, George Gordon, Lord. Byron’s Letters and Journals . Ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 13 vols. London: John Murray 1973–94. Burnett: T.A.J. Burnett, The Rise and Fall of a Regency Dandy , John Murray, 1981. CSS: The Life and Correspondence of the Late Robert Southey , ed. C.C.Southey, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 6 vols 1849-1850. J.W.W.: Selections from the letters of Robert Southey , Ed. John Wood Warter, 4 vols, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1856. LJ: The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals . Ed. R. E. Prothero, 6 vols. London: John Murray, 1899-1904. LJM: The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron . Ed. Andrew Nicholson, Liverpool University Press, 2007. NLS: National Library of Scotland. Q: Byron: A Self-Portrait; Letters and Diaries 1798 to 1824 . Ed. Peter Quennell, 2 vols, John Murray, 1950. Ramos: The letters of Robert Southey to John May, 1797 to 1838.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Southey Poems Pdf
    Robert southey poems pdf Continue For the chairman of the Australian Ballet, see Robert Southee (businessman). This article needs additional quotes to verify. Please help improve this article by adding quotes to reliable sources. Non-sources of materials can be challenged and removed. Find sources: Robert Southee - news newspaper book scientist JSTOR (August 2018) (Learn, how and when to remove this template message) Robert SoutheyPortrait, c. 1795Born (1774-08-12)12 August 1774Bristole, EnglandDied21 March 1843 (1843-03-21) (age 68)London, EnglandOccupationPoet, historian, historian, historian, historian, historian, historian, historian, biographer, essayistLiter movementRoantisisspehit Fricker (1795-1838; her death)Carolina Ann Bowles (1839-1843; his death) Robert Southee (1839-1843; his death) Robert Southee (1839-1843; his death) Robert Southee (1839-1843; his death) Robert Southee (1839-1843; his death) Robert Southee (1839-1843; his death) Robert Southee (1839-1843; his death) Robert Southee (183 /ˈsaʊði/ or /ˈsʌði/; August 12, 1774 -March 21, 1843) was an English romantic poet and poet laureate from 1813 until his death. Like other lake poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southee began as a radical but became steadily more conservative as he gained respect for Britain and its institutions. Other romantics, notably Byron, accused him of siding with the institution for money and status. He is remembered as the author of the poem After Blenheim and the original version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Life Robert Southey, Sir Francis Chantrey, 1832, National Portrait Gallery, London Robert Southee was born in Wine Street, Bristol, Robert Southey and Margaret Hill. He was educated at Westminster School in London (where he was expelled for writing an article in The Flagellant, attributing the invention to the devil), and at Balliol College, Oxford.
    [Show full text]
  • ABSTRACT Genius, Heredity, and Family Dynamics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and His Children: a Literary Biography Yolanda J. Gonz
    ABSTRACT Genius, Heredity, and Family Dynamics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his Children: A Literary Biography Yolanda J. Gonzalez, Ph.D. Chairperson: Stephen Prickett, Ph.D. The children of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hartley, Derwent, and Sara, have received limited scholarly attention, though all were important nineteenth century figures. Lack of scholarly attention on them can be blamed on their father, who has so overshadowed his children that their value has been relegated to what they can reveal about him, the literary genius. Scholars who have studied the children for these purposes all assume familial ties justify their basic premise, that Coleridge can be understood by examining the children he raised. But in this case, the assumption is false; Coleridge had little interaction with his children overall, and the task of raising them was left to their mother, Sara, her sister Edith, and Edith’s husband, Robert Southey. While studies of S. T. C.’s children that seek to provide information about him are fruitless, more productive scholarly work can be done examining the lives and contributions of Hartley, Derwent, and Sara to their age. This dissertation is a starting point for reinvestigating Coleridge’s children and analyzes their life and work. Taken out from under the shadow of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we find that Hartley was not doomed to be a “child of romanticism” as a result of his father’s experimental approach to his education; rather, he chose this persona for himself. Conversely, Derwent is the black sheep of the family and consciously chooses not to undertake the family profession, writing poetry.
    [Show full text]
  • Masters of the Mind
    Masters of the Mind A Study of Vampiric Desire, Corruption, and Obsession in Polidori's The Vampyre, Coleridge's Christabel, and Le Fanu's Carmilla By Astrid van der Baan Astrid van der Baan 4173163 Department of English Radboud University Nijmegen Supervisor: Marguerité Corporaal 15 August 2016 van der Baan 4173163/1 Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude for the help and support that I received from people while writing my BA thesis. First, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Marguérite Corporaal for her advice and guidance during this project. Next, I would like to thank Anne van den Heuvel, Irene Dröge and Tessa Peeters for their support and feedback. I could not have finished my thesis without you guys! van der Baan 4173163/2 Table of Content Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... 1 Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4 Chapter 1 The Vampyre (1819) ................................................................................................ 10 1.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 10 1.2 Main Gothic elements in The Vampyre .........................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Best Laid Schemes Sometimes Turn out the Worst’: Robert Via Southey’S Success and Failure Panorâmica Maria Zulmira Castanheira 2 (2009)
    ““TThhee bbeesstt llaaiidd sscchheemmeess ssoommeettiimmeess ttuurrnn oouutt tthhee Ensaio wwoorrsstt””:: RRoobbeerrtt SSoouutthheeyy’’ss ssuucccceessss aanndd ffaaiilluurree1 Maria Zulmira Castanheira |Universidade Nova de Lisboa In recent years there has been a renewal of interest in the poet, historian and polemicist Robert Southey (1774‐1843), as is demonstrated by several publications, namely two biographies, Mark Storey’s Robert Southey, A Life (1997) and W. A. Speck’s Robert Southey: Entire Man of Letters (2006), a new five‐volume edition of Southey’s Poetical Works, 1793‐1810 (2004), a volume of essays edited by Lynda Pratt entitled Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism (2006), Carol Bolton’s study Writing the Empire: Robert Southey and Romantic Colonialism (2007) and David M. Craig’s book Robert Southey and Romantic Apostasy: Political Argument in Britain, 1780‐1840 (2007). Furthermore, the first collected edition of Southey’s vast correspondence, co‐directed by Lynda Pratt and Tim Fulford, is under way. After a long period of neglect, a concerted effort is being made to reassess Southey’s work, rehabilitate it, analyse the development of his political and social ideas and recognise his centrality to British literature and culture in the Romantic age. Southey was a major figure on the literary scene of his day, though a controversial one for having moved from being an enthusiast of the French 1 This paper was presented at the 29th Annual Conference of The Portuguese Association for Anglo‐American Studies (APEAA): “Success and Failure”, University of Aveiro, Portugal, 17–19 April 2008. ‘The best laid schemes sometimes turn out the worst’: Robert Via Southey’s success and failure Panorâmica Maria Zulmira Castanheira 2 (2009) Revolution to a supporter of the Tories.
    [Show full text]
  • From Chaucer to Tennyson by Henry A. Beers</H1>
    From Chaucer to Tennyson by Henry A. Beers From Chaucer to Tennyson by Henry A. Beers Juliet Sutherland, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders Chautauqua Reading Circle Literature FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON WITH TWENTY-NINE PORTRAITS AND SELECTIONS FROM THIRTY AUTHORS. BY page 1 / 403 HENRY A. BEERS _Professor of English Literature in Yale University_. [Illustration] PREFACE. In so brief a history of so rich a literature, the problem is how to get room enough to give, not an adequate impression--that is impossible--but any impression at all of the subject. To do this I have crowded out every thing but _belles lettres_. Books in philosophy, history, science, etc., however important in the history of English thought, receive the merest incidental mention, or even no mention at all. Again, I have omitted the literature of the Anglo-Saxon period, which is written in a language nearly as hard for a modern Englishman to read as German is, or Dutch. Caedmon and Cynewulf are no more a part of English literature than Vergil and Horace are of Italian. I have also left out the vernacular literature of the Scotch before the time of Burns. Up to the date of the union Scotland was a separate kingdom, and its literature had a development independent of the English, though parallel with it. In dividing the history into periods, I have followed, with some modifications, the divisions made by Mr. Stopford Brooke in his excellent little _Primer of English Literature_. A short reading course page 2 / 403 is appended to each chapter. HENRY A.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cases of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe Dissertation P
    THE MIDDLE EAST IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA: THE CASES OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, AND EDGAR ALLAN POE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Ahmed Nidal Almansour ***** The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Steven S. Fink, Adviser Professor Jared Gardner _______________________ Professor Elizabeth Hewitt Adviser English Copyright by Ahmed Nidal Almansour 2005 ABSTRACT The presence of the Middle East in the works of American artists between the Revolution and the Civil War is pervasive and considerable. What makes this outlandish element of critical significance is that its proliferation coincided with the emerging American literary identity. The wide spectrum of meanings that was related to it adds even more significance to its critical value. In its theoretical approach, this work uses Raymond Schwab’s The Oriental Renaissance as a ground for all its arguments. It considers the rise of the Oriental movement in America to be a continuation of what had already started of Oriental researches in Europe. Like their counterparts in Europe, the American writers who are selected for this study were genuinely interested in identifying with the Oriental thought. The European mediation, however, should not be allowed to hold any significance other than pointing to the fact that French, German, and English Orientalist organizations were more technically equipped. The sentiment of identification with the East resonated equally on both sides of the Atlantic. This work investigates three cases from antebellum America: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe.
    [Show full text]
  • The Hero As Man of Letters”
    “THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS”: INTELLECTUAL POLITICS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ROMANTIC EPIC By Copyright 2013 Eric S. Hood Ph.D., University of Kansas 2013 Submitted to the Department of English and the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy __________________________________ Chairperson: Ann Rowland Committee Members:__________________________________ Philip Barnard __________________________________ Anna Neill __________________________________ Dorice Elliott __________________________________ Leslie Tuttle Date Defended: 08/30/2013 ii The Dissertation Committee for Eric S. Hood certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis/dissertation: “THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS”: INTELLECTUAL POLITICS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ROMANTIC EPIC __________________________________ Ann Rowland _______________________08/30/2013__ Date Approved iii Abstract Although the thirty years from 1794 to 1824 saw the production of more epic poetry than any other period in British literary history, the epic’s function within the culture of Romanticism remains largely misunderstood and neglected. The problem in theorizing the Romantic epic stems from the uncommon diversity of epic performances during this period and from the epic’s sudden reappearance after a long period of apparent dormancy in the eighteenth century. When the Romantic epic is defined, however, not as poetic form but as a repeated political act, the epic’s eighteenth-century
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Notes Introduction 1. Stuart Curran opened his seminal essay, ‘Romantic Poetry: The I Altered’, in Romanticism and Feminism, ed. Anne K. Mellor (Bloomington and Indiana- polis: Indiana UP, 1988): ‘Let us suppose they all died young: not just Keats at twenty-five, Shelley at twenty-nine, and Byron at thirty-six, but Coleridge in 1802, Wordsworth in 1807, and Southey on the day in 1813 he became poet laureate’ (185). Marilyn Butler likewise entertained the idea of killing Wordsworth prematurely, as early as 1793, in ‘Plotting the Revolution: The Political Narratives of Romantic Poetry and Criticism’, in Romantic Revolu- tions: Criticism and Theory, ed. Kenneth Johnston et al. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1990), pp. 133–157. In the process of telling the story of how he was cured from depression by reading Wordsworth in 1828, John Stuart Mill parenthesises the later Wordsworth with extraordinary authority: ‘the miscellaneous poems, in the two-volume edition of 1815 (to which little of value was added in the latter part of the author’s life), proved to be the precise thing for my mental wants at that particular juncture’. Auto- biography and Other Writings, ed. Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969), p. 88. In 1879, Matthew Arnold, more famously and influ- entially, originated the notion of Wordsworth’s Great Decade when he said that ‘within one single decade , between 1798 and 1808, almost all his really first rate work was produced’. Poems of Wordsworth (London and New York: Macmillan, 1888, 1st ed. 1879), p. xii. In the early 1980s, the most influential Romanticist of the last two decades, Jerome McGann, in the most casual manner remarked that in 1807 Wordsworth ‘fell asleep’.
    [Show full text]
  • Revolution Or Repetition: Woodstock's Romanticism
    Introduction Countercultures Ideologies and Practices Alternative Visions REVOLUTION OR REPETITION: WOODSTOCK’S ROMANTICISM Maarten Doorman If we try to understand global history by pointing to revolutionary moments we would probably mention 2001, 1989, and 1968 as the most striking years in the postwar Western world. And if we discuss utopian thought and the quest for “alternative realities,” the year 1968 comes to the fore, more than the years 1989and 2001,which might be seen as more important turning points in political history.1 As the writer Mark Kurlansky puts it in his book 1968:The Year That Rocked the World: “There has never been a year like 1968[…]. At a time when nations and cultures were still separate and very diff erent — and in 1968 Poland, France, the United States, and Mexico were far more diff erent from one another than they are today — there occurred a spontaneous combustion of rebellious spirits around the world.”2 Even for historians less focused on specifi c years than journalists and writers like Kurlansky it seems hard to deny that the late 1960s are oft en regarded as the most revolutionary years of the postwar period. However, if we take a closer look at the changes of that time, the question emerges in how far the cultural revolution of those days represented a shift in cultural values that was completely new. So in Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1985),Richard Holmes describes how he tuned in to Radio Luxembourg in the spring of 1968and heard a live report on the storming of the Bourse in Paris: crowds shouting, the crack of tear-gas grenades, breaking glass, and cheers.
    [Show full text]
  • Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey by Joseph Cottle
    Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey by Joseph Cottle Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey by Joseph Cottle Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Thomas Berger, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. [Illustration: Portrait.] * * * * * REMINISCENCES OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND ROBERT SOUTHEY by JOSEPH COTTLE * * * * * INTRODUCTION. It is with a solemnized feeling that I enter on these Reminiscences. page 1 / 646 Except one, I have survived all the associates of my earlier days. The young, with a long life in perspective, (if any life can be called long, in so brief an existence) are unable to realize the impressions of a man, nearer eighty than seventy, when the shadows of evening are gathering around, and, in a retrospective glance, the whole field of past vision appears, in all its complexities, like the indistinct tumults of a dream. The acute reasoner--the fiery politician--the eager polemic--the emulous aspirant after fame; and many such have I known, where are they? and how mournful, if any one of them should be found, at last, to have directed his solicitudes, alone, to material objects;--should have neglected to cultivate his own little plot of earth, more valuable than mines! and have sown no seeds for eternity. It is not a light motive which could have prompted me, when this world of "Eye and Ear" is fast receding, while grander scenes are opening, and so near! to call up almost long-forgotten associations, and to dwell on the stirring, by-gone occurrences that tend, in some measure, to interfere with that calm which is most desirable, and best accords with the feelings of one who holds life by such slender ties.
    [Show full text]