Robert Rix

“Letters in a Strange Character”: Runes, Rocks and Romanticism

In the late 1830s and early 1840s, the decipherment of the famous runes at Runamo in Sweden was hailed as a sensation in the European press. It was a moment of triumph for Romantic antiquarianism and its recovery of a glorious past, since the interpretation confirmed what was known from legend. But when the runic “inscription” was exposed as nothing but incidental cracks and fissures in the rock surface, the success turned to scandal. The scandal is historically revealing, as it can be seen to summarize a paradigmatic shift in the way the past was recovered. The essay examines the clash between the older idealistic model of antiquarianism, which had gained new impetus among Romantic writers, and the new scientific mode of research, which relied on hard facts rather than legend. As part of this examination, the historical, cultural and intellectual contexts for these competing strands of antiquarianism are discussed.

Northumbrian angels in Rome: religion and politics in the anecdote of St Gregory

The article examines the legend of Pope Gregorys encounter with boys – Angli – in a Roman market. The legend takes the form of an anecdote which dramatises Gregorys decision to launch a mission to Britain. It is argued that this oft-cited story had political resonance and that this is discernible in the early sources of the legend: the anonymous Vita S. Gregorii and Bedes Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. A new perspective is opened up by re-inserting the legend into the Northumbrian debates of the late seventh and early eighth centuries. By reading internal evidence with external contexts, the article establishes that the anecdote represents an attempt to revise the history of the conversion in Northumbria. This revision is intrinsically connected with a number of overlapping discourses: the stigma of the belated Northumbrian acceptance of Roman orthodoxy, the threat of the Celtic churches, monastic competition for primacy and status, and possibly dynastic rifts.

William Blake's “The Tyger”: Divine and Beastly Bodies in Eighteenth-Century Children's Poetry

One reason why William Blake’s “The Tyger” seems to resist interpretation is that its connections with eighteenth-century children’s poetry have not been sufficiently recovered. By reinserting “The Tyger” within the contexts of literature intended for the religious instruction of children, the poem’s allusions and motivations can be more clearly ascertained. However, as with all Blake’s poetry, we cannot approach an understanding of the poem without also paying attention to the radical religiousness that he set against dominant theology. By gathering evidence of the traditions that inform “The Tyger,” I will open the poem to new perspectives. An important feature that connects “The Tyger” with the mainstream of children’s books is the animal illustration. In fact, pictorial representations of animals have been an essential part of children’s literature from its advent. The Moravian educator Johann Amos Comenius argued that young learners needed visuals to stimulate their understanding. His popular Orbis sensualium pictus (1658; trans. Charles Hoole, The Visible World, 1659) was one of the earliest illustrated books for children, functioning as a pictorial encyclopaedia designed “to entice witty children” to learn (Hoole ii). Comenius believed that if the child understood the elements of the unified universe, the child would find God, the creator of the visible world. This general motivation behind watching and commenting on the Book of Nature is also what informs Blake’s poem. Among various objects of the natural world depicted in Comenius’ work were the different species of quadrupeds. In this group, the “Tyger” is described as “the cruellest of all” (Comenius 39–40). Comenius’ claim is upheld in many children’s books of the eighteenth century. This is important for understanding Blake’s choice of it as a symbol. In works teaching children about the natural world, illustrations of exotic animals were often accompanied by descriptions of their proportions, their surroundings, and their relation to other animals. Blake’s references to the tiger’s “symmetry,” its habitat (“the forests of the night”), and the comparison with another animal (the lamb) are in line with this type of description. The speaker in “The Tyger” exhibits an interest in the beast’s physical form that seems to indicate that he or she has read such a fact-based description. This approach was usually coupled with an acknowledgement that the natural world was the creation of God. One of the most successful hybrids of natural science and Christianity was the French priest Noël Antoine Pluche’s Spectacle de la nature (1732), which was translated into all of the major European languages. The subtitle of the many English editions (trans. 1733) illustrates its approach: The Whole being a Complete Course of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, Calculated for Instruction of Youth, in order to Prepare them for an Early Knowledge of Natural History, and Create in Their Minds an Exalted Idea of the Wisdom of the GREAT CREATOR

‘The North’ and ‘the East’: The Odin Migration Theory

Robert Rix discusses the interest in eighteenth-century and romantic-period Britain in the legends surrounding Odin, the chief deity of the ancient Norse pantheon. As Rix observes, there had been, since the Middle Ages, a persistent attempt to interpret Odin as an historical figure from Asia who conquered the north of Europe, bringing with him a new language and the art of poetry. Rix’s account of how English writers took seriously the Odin migration idea not only explores a largely unstudied aspect of Anglo-Nordic cultural exchange but also provides a new perspective on the ongoing critical debate deriving ultimately from Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) about the uses of the East as an ‘Other’ and the ways in which that ‘Other’ was implicated in definitions of English literature.

William Wordsworth’s Danish Ghost and the Ballad that Never Was

ABSTRACT William Wordsworth’s “A Fragment,” later renamed as “The Danish Boy. A Fragment,” was first published in Lyrical Ballads (1800). It is a vignette of a ghost – a Danish boy – singing in the landscape. It is the aim of the article to examine the poem in a number of contexts that have not previously been discussed. It is argued that the singing and harp-playing ghost is a trope for the poetic vigour that had dissipated under the demands for classical styles of poetry. More than any other piece in Lyrical Ballads, “A Fragment” points to the ancient Germanic origin of the new models for poetic composition that were put forward. The poem participates in the “bardic revival,” which is closely linked to Romantic-era fiction and antiquarianism. But, it is specifically the idea of the skalds, the ancient Scandinavian bards, which is significant here. Wordsworth’s interest in Norse poetry will be assessed, and so will concurrent antiquarian claims that skaldic poetry was the direct progenitor of imaginative poetry in England.

William Blake’s “Infant Joy” and the Rhetoric of Riddle

William Blake’s poem “Infant Joy,” originally printed in Songs of Innocence (1789), presents the reader with a two-stanza dialogue on infancy. The purpose of this article is not to unravel the meaning of the poem, but to determine the generic model on which it is constructed and, consequently, to identify and document its intertextual relationships. Other of Blake’s Songs are modeled on popular text genres, which contemporary readers would have recognized. For instance, it has been convincingly argued (for example, Richardson 64–74) and widely accepted that the form of “The Lamb” imitates catechism, i.e., the summarizing of Christian principles for the instruction of children through questions and answers. But Blake uses this allusion ironically, insofar as the child speaker is not instructed in obedience to Christian injunctions, but instead teaches himself that he is one with Christ. As we shall see, a similar transposition of a well-known genre in “Infant Joy”; the register of the riddle is used to highlight the mystery of the newborn child. This important rhetorical function of Blake’s poem has not previously been discussed. “Infant Joy” consists of two sestets:

“In darkness they grope”: Ancient Remains and Romanticism in Denmark

This article explores the fraught dynamics between literary romanticism and antiquarianism in nineteenth-century Denmark. It explores the tensions between two national-romantic projects: the desire for collecting ancient objects and imaginatively transcending these same objects. Focusing on the early works of the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger – especially his famous poem “The Golden Horns” [Guldhornene] – the article casts new light on the appropriation of Nordic prehistory at a significant historical juncture. As part of this investigation, the early development of the Danish museum dedicated to the exhibition of Nordic antiquities is reconsidered. To gain a further perspective on the period, the article concludes with a discussion of the theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig, who straddled the line between romantic idealism and antiquarian research.

Introduction: Romanticism in Scandinavia

In this special issue on Scandinavian romanticism, focus will be placed on central concerns and representative moments of romantic writing in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. However, the essays in thi...

Oriental Odin: Tracing the east in northern culture and literature

The article examines the developments that made the legend of an Asian migration into Europe part of mainstream historiography during the eighteenth century. It was believed that the Norse god Odin was in fact a historical person, who had migrated from Asia to with the north of Europe with his tribe. The significance of this legend to how medieval poetry was received and debated in England has received little attention. The study falls into three sections. The first will trace the significance of the Odin migration legend in discovering Germanic cultural origins. The second section examines the impact of the legend on philological studies, primarily in establishing a new category: the Gothic (i.e. Teutonic/Germanic) poetic tradition. The final section will focus on the debate between two of the most important eighteenth-century pioneers of vernacular poetic tradition: Thomas Percy and Thomas Warton. Their discussion over whether the Asian foundation of Germanic (and thereby English) tradition had paved the way for later Arabian influences is instructive, as it shows how Eastern “others” were negotiated in the discovery of cultural and national roots.

Magnetic Cure in William Blake's THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Written in 1790, William Blakes poem The French Revolution is an eccentric account of the earliest phase of upheaval in France. It focuses on the challenge mounted by the Third Estate to the ancie...