Mont Blanc in British Literary Culture 1786 – 1826
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Mont Blanc in British Literary Culture 1786 – 1826 Carl Alexander McKeating Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Leeds School of English May 2020 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Carl Alexander McKeating to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by Carl Alexander McKeating in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Frank Parkinson, without whose scholarship in support of Yorkshire-born students I could not have undertaken this study. The Frank Parkinson Scholarship stipulates that parents of the scholar must also be Yorkshire-born. I cannot help thinking that what Parkinson had in mind was the type of social mobility embodied by the journey from my Bradford-born mother, Marie McKeating, who ‘passed the Eleven-Plus’ but was denied entry into a grammar school because she was ‘from a children’s home and likely a trouble- maker’, to her second child in whom she instilled a love of books, debate and analysis. The existence of this thesis is testament to both my mother’s and Frank Parkinson’s generosity and vision. Thank you to David Higgins and Jeremy Davies for their guidance and support. I give considerable thanks to Fiona Beckett and John Whale for their encouragement and expert interventions. Nick Ray should not go without mention – I found his support particularly helpful at a key moment. Thanks are also given to Robert Jones, whose interest long ago in my initial proposals set the wheels in motion. The wider fabric of the School of English has also played its part in fostering my academic development. Particular thanks to Anna Fleming, a fellow School of English postgraduate student who performed a Heimlich manoeuvre that saved my life while we were out scrambling on Glyder Fach – proving Wordsworth scholars have many strings to their bows! This thesis could not have been completed without the patience and understanding of my family. Thanks to my two daughters, Heather and Rosa. Special thanks to Stephanie Crolla’s assistance with childcare. Thanks to Rory McKeating who, when I was debating whether to leave teaching to take up the scholarship, cut through my procrastinations and told me to ‘go for it’. Finally, my biggest thanks are for Rachel Crolla, who has given inestimable support and encouragement throughout the process. Abstract This thesis makes an original contribution to the field of Romantic literary studies by adopting a geocritical framework alongside more conventional literary analysis to consider the relationship between Mont Blanc and British literature in the Romantic period, with a primary focus on the years 1786-1826. Essential to this approach is a methodology that focusses on the relationship between texts and both material place and the associations of material place in the mind. The geo-centred research presented in this thesis has deployed a range of strategies that has involved mapping texts, experiencing and examining material place in detail, and contextualising Mont Blanc writings within a broader understanding of mountain activity and the realities of mountain environments. Pictorial evidence has been used to support these methodologies and textual analyses. An original contribution is made towards understanding a number of major canonical and lesser-known British writings of the Romantic period, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Chamouny; The Hour Before Sunrise. A Hymn’ (1802) and ‘Kubla Khan’ (1816), William Wordsworth’s The Prelude (1805), Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’ (1817), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826), and Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto III (1816) and Manfred (1817). While a number of previously unrecognised connections between selected Mont Blanc-oriented writings over a forty year period have been revealed, the thesis also presents an experiment that has tested the potentialities of a geocritical methodology. Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 3 Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 Argument ......................................................................................................................... 2 Methodology .................................................................................................................... 6 Critical Context .............................................................................................................. 17 Summary of the Thesis .................................................................................................. 21 Chapter One ........................................................................................................................... 24 The Lake, the Mountain and Imagined Travel: Mont Blanc in the Travel Poetry of George Keate, Helen Maria Williams, William Parsons, Thomas Whalley, Richard Cooksey and Lord Byron ............................................................................................................................. 24 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 24 George Keate ................................................................................................................. 26 Helen Maria Williams .................................................................................................... 29 William Parsons ............................................................................................................. 36 Thomas Whalley ............................................................................................................ 48 Richard Cooksey ............................................................................................................ 52 Lord Byron ..................................................................................................................... 57 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 74 Chapter Two .......................................................................................................................... 76 Coleridge and the Contested Space of Mont Blanc ............................................................... 76 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 76 Mont Blanc 1789-1802 ...................................................................................................... 82 In the Shadow of Napoleon: ‘Chamouny; The Hour Before Sunrise. A Hymn’ ............... 90 A Climb ‘transferred’ to Mont Blanc................................................................................. 95 Chapter Three ...................................................................................................................... 114 ‘To act the God among external things’: Wordsworth’s Mont Blancs ................................ 114 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 114 The ‘Biographical Matrix’: Mapping and Understanding Wordsworth’s representations of the 1790 tour .................................................................................................................... 117 Descriptive Sketches ........................................................................................................ 125 The Prelude ...................................................................................................................... 131 ‘Processions, Suggested on a Sabbath Morning in the Vale of Chamouny’ .................... 147 Identity Projection in Wordsworth’s Reimagined Mont Blanc: a Response to Coleridge? ......................................................................................................................................... 153 Chapter Four ........................................................................................................................ 162 Anxiety and Death in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’ 1817 ..................................... 162 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 162 Composition Date ........................................................................................................ 173 ‘Mont Blanc’ .................................................................................................................... 177 Chapter Five ......................................................................................................................... 203 A Gothic Mont Blanc in The Romance of the Forest, ‘The Hermit of Mont Blanc’, Manfred, Frankenstein and The Last Man .........................................................................................