Global Romanticism

For several decades, interest in the British Romantics' conceptualizations and representations of the world beyond their national borders has been guided by postcolonial and, more recently, transatlantic paradigms. Building on these important foundations, Global Romanticism: Origins, Orientations, and Engagements, 1760-1820 charts a new course by viewing the literature and culture of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Britain and beyond through the lens of long-durational globalization. In a series of widespread but complementary inquiries, this provocative collection of essays by established and senior scholars argues not only that many British Romantics were committed to conceptualizing their world as an increasingly interconnected whole, but also that in doing so they were responding to early modern versions of the transnational economic, political, socio-cultural, and environmental dynamics collectively known today as globalization. Engaging with poetry, fiction, and non-fiction written by a range of authors-from canonical figures like Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley to the colonists of Sierra Leone-Global Romanticism explores the myriad ways the British Romantics imagined globality for the modern era.