Time and Terrain in British Romantic Writing

Walking and its relationship to our mental and cultural lives has been a topic of much recent academic and popular interest. Here, Alan Vardy explores the role of walking in Romantic texts from the canonical to the ephemeral, illuminating the quotidian, fleeting events that nonetheless constitute our subjective selves.

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Walking and its relationship to our mental and cultural lives has been a topic of huge academic and popular interest in the last few years. Here, Alan Vardy explores the role of walking in one of its most obvious locations within English literature: Romanticism. Through chapters focusing on both canonical and non-canonical writings – including rich ephemera – by Joseph Cottle, Coleridge, Dorothy and William Wordsworth, de Quincey and John Clare, Time and Terrain in British Romantic Writing draws out a specific focus on affect studies and the relationship between walking and trauma, examining the relationship between emotional states and movement through space and time. It also takes up the work of lesser-known Romantic writers such as Elizabeth Smith and Thomas Wilkinson in order to mount a broad and deep exploration of the quotidian, fleeting events that nonetheless constitute our subjective selves.