Romanticism and Improvisation, 17501850
Romanticism and Improvisation, 17501850
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Summary
Angela Esterhammer explores the previously unknown influence of male and female performers who improvised poetry in public during the period 1750–1850. She explores how improvisation contributes to Romantic ideas about genius, gender, and national culture, and traces the representation of poetic improvisers in nineteenth-century fiction.
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Romanticism and Improvisation, 17501850 by Angela Esterhammer
During the Romantic era, especially in Italy, performers known as improvvisatori and improvvisatrici extemporised poetry in public in response to subjects requested by their audiences. This type of performance fascinated Grand Tourists from northern Europe, who reported on poetic improvisers in hundreds of travel accounts, journals, letters, and periodical articles. By uncovering historical data and interpreting literary texts, Professor Esterhammer identifies patterns in the evolving responses of English, German, French, and Russian writers to the experience of improvisation. She explores how improvisation interacts with Romantic ideas about genius, spontaneity, orality, and emotional expressiveness, and relates to evolving concepts of gender and nation. Esterhammer goes on to interpret the influence that the figure of the poetic improviser had in nineteenth-century English and European fiction. In this context, the improvvisatore casts new light on conflicts between poetic genius and socio-economic constraints, and on the evolution of the Bildungsroman.
'Romanticism and Improvisation is on all counts an original and valuable study of improvisation as a trans-European phenomenon …' Monatshefte
'This book should be of general interest to scholars of the romantic period, but of especial import to those concerned with the emergence of the idea of romantic poetic genius, the development of national concepts of literature, the impact of mass print culture, and romantic audiences' BARS Bulletin & Review
'This book should be of general interest to scholars of the romantic period, but of especial import to those concerned with the emergence of the idea of romantic poetic genius, the development of national concepts of literature, the impact of mass print culture, and romantic audiences' BARS Bulletin & Review
Angela Esterhammer is Professor in the Department of English, University of Zurich and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Western Ontario. Previous books include Romantic Poetry. The Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages (edited, 2002) and The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism (2000).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780521897099 |
| ISBN 10 | 0521897092 |
| Title | Romanticism and Improvisation, 17501850 |
| Author | Angela Esterhammer |
| Series | Cambridge Studies In Romanticism |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Year published | 2008-08-07 |
| Number of pages | 290 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |