Lilla Maria Crisafulli

Poetry as Thought and Action: Mazzini's Reflections on Byron

Summary This article opens with a brief introduction to Giuseppe Mazzini, with particular reference to his commitment to republicanism, an ideal that would be fulfilled in Italy only after considerable time and with great difficulty. It then focuses on Mazzinis critical reception of Byron. Although Giuseppe Mazzini and Percy Bysshe Shelley would have allowed a more obvious comparison, it was Byron who really attracted Mazzinis attention and criticism. Mazzini uses Byron, on the one hand, as a means to demonstrate that Italians could discuss European poetry without putting at risk their national identity, or, as the classicists maintained, that fragile and fragmented profile of a nation that contemporary Italy offered to the minds and hearts of thousands of young people. On the other hand, however, Mazzini questions Byrons authority by subverting and converting his value, in a very personal way: he gradually substitutes Byrons with a different authority and credits him with new values. Mazzini could not accept Byron as the emblem of elitism and isolation: Byrons solipsism needed to be purified, and his renowned cynical attitude tempered; eventually Byrons myth needed to be connected to the destiny of peoples and nations.

Women and Abolitionism: Hannah More’s and Ann Yearsley’s Poetry of Freedom

In 1824 the Quaker Elizabeth Heyrick published her pamphlet Immediate not Gradual Abolition; or, an Inquiry into the shortest, safest, and most effectual means of getting rid of West Indian Slavery (reprinted in New York in 1825 and in London in 1832). William Wilberforce, who by then had spent most of his life as a parliamentary leader of the abolitionist movement, did not appreciate this radical female stand and invited his followers not to support it. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Heyrick’s pamphlet was successful and helped to bring about the liberation of slave children. It might be noted that 10 per cent of the financial support to abolitionist societies of the time came from women, and in areas such as Manchester women contributed up to half the total amount, although, while women were admitted into such societies, they were excluded from leadership positions.1

Romantic Women Poets

Romantic Women Poets: Genre and Gender focuses on the part played by women poets in the creation of the literary canon in the Romantic period in Britain. Its thirteen essays enrich our panoramic view of an age that is traditionally dominated by male authors such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Scott. Instead the volume concentrates on the poetical theory and practice of such extraordinary and fascinating women as Joanna Baillie, Charlotte Smith, Anna Laetita Barbauld, Dorothy Wordsworth, Helen Maria Williams, Lady Morgan, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Anna Seward, and Lady Caroline Lamb. Female and male poetics, gender and genres, literary forms and poetic modes are extensively discussed together with the diversity of behaviour and personal responses that the individual women poets offered to their age and provoked in their readers. There have been several important collections of essays in this particular area of study in the last few years, but this volume reflects and complements much of this earlier critical work with specific strengths of its own.