Adorned

The Romantic Poetics of Ornament

Ornamental verses abound in Romantic-era commonplace books, albums, epitaphs, pamphlets, personal and commercial anthologies, newspapers, magazines, and periodicals – that is, in the repositories where historical general audiences read and recorded poetry. Today, by contrast, attachment to ornament is commonly dismissed as a defect of taste, often feminized. The result is that a vast and important body of writing from the golden age of general audience poetry reading has become illegible. Alexis Chema offers a framework for relearning to read this poetry. Following the lead of key spokeswomen for ornament—Hester Piozzi, Catherine Fanshawe, Mary Robinson, Anna Letitia Barbauld, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon – Chema develops a new style-based critical method suitable for analyzing, appreciating and enjoying an array of popular Romantic poetry, from riddles and alphabet poems to political allegory.

Adorned contributes to the scholarly recovery projects that have radically expanded our access to the literature of the past, arguing that reading ornamental verse as poetry in its own right (not just for its sociological interest) is an imaginative necessity if we are to truly recuperate the writing of nonelite authors and diversify the canon. The book is also, at its heart, a defense of poetry. Its broadest claim is that common readers in the Romantic age embraced poetry, or language adorned, as a means of completing, elevating, honoring, and praising – gestures that are as challenging and as essential today as ever.

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