Amelia Opie's Lemaistre Sequence and the Romantic Occasional Poem. Issue 2 (July 2021)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Amelia Opie's Lemaistre Sequence and the Romantic Occasional Poem. Issue 2 (July 2021)
- Main Title:
- Amelia Opie's Lemaistre Sequence and the Romantic Occasional Poem
- Authors:
- Stokes, Christopher
- Abstract:
- Abstract : The occasional poem was one of the most commonly and diversely used Romantic genres, especially in informal and sociable modalities, yet is almost entirely marginalised in scholarship. This essay uses the reflexivity of Amelia Opie's sequence of birthday poems to Elizabeth Lemaistre (1815–44) to examine the dynamics of occasionality. Precisely because Opie must repeat the occasion across the sequence, the poetics of occasionality are clarified: each poem exists as a single dated action but also part of an ongoing work. This reflexive tension between the poem's character as act and text is explored through the nature of content in occasional verse; dating and temporality; and the phenomenon of the gift poem. An analysis of the Lemaistre sequence not only helps us to understand Opie's specific uses of the occasional to articulate friendship across networks of sociable affect, but also to determine more widely relevant traits of genre – not least, occasionality as a social practice and not just a literary classification.
- Is Part Of:
- Romanticism. Volume 27:Issue 2(2021)
- Journal:
- Romanticism
- Issue:
- Volume 27:Issue 2(2021)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 27, Issue 2 (2021)
- Year:
- 2021
- Volume:
- 27
- Issue:
- 2
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2021-0027-0002-0000
- Page Start:
- 201
- Page End:
- 213
- Publication Date:
- 2021-07
- Subjects:
- Amelia Opie -- occasional poetry -- temporality -- gifts -- sociability -- letter-writing
Romanticism -- England -- History -- Periodicals
Romanticism -- Periodicals
English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals
English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals
820.9145 - Journal URLs:
- http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/romanticism/ ↗
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=7&sid=e7afc04a-3725-4889-9371-1543032cada5%40SRCSM2 ↗
http://www.euppublishing.com/journal/rom ↗
http://www.euppublishing.com/journals ↗ - DOI:
- 10.3366/rom.2021.0509 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 1354-991X
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 16999.xml