Fictions and Fakes: Forging Romantic Authenticity, 1760–1845 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)
Cambridge University Press, 2/2/2006
EAN 9780521850780, ISBN10: 0521850789
Hardcover, 278 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm
Language: English
British Romantic literature descends from a line of impostors, forgers and frauds. Through a series of case-studies - beginning with the golden age of forgery in the late eighteenth century and continuing through canonical Romanticism and its aftermath - Margaret Russett demonstrates how Romantic writers distinguished their fictions from the fakes surrounding them. This 2006 book examines canonical and lesser-known Romantic works alongside fakes such as Thomas Chatterton's medieval poems and 'Caraboo', the impostor-princess. Through original readings of works by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Walter Scott, John Clare, and James Hogg, as well as chapters on impostors in popular culture, Russett's interdisciplinary and wide-ranging study offers a major reinterpretation of Romanticism and its continuing influence today.
Introduction
1. From fake to fiction
toward a Romantic theory of imposture
2. Chatterton's primal scene of writing
3. Unconscious plagiarism
from 'Christabel' to the Lay of the Last Minstrel
4. The delusions of Hope
5. The 'Caraboo' hoax
Romantic woman as mirror and mirage
6. Clare Byron
7. The Gothic violence of the letter
Bibliography.