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Romantic Refractions: Light Effects in Ruskin's Poetry

Garratt, Peter

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Abstract

The poetry of John Ruskin – which amounts to a surprisingly large body of work, mostly written in the 1830s and 1840s – reveals the stirrings of the moral perceptual attitude that would emerge with such distinctive force in Modern Painters, yet one guided by the influences of Keats, Shelley and Byron as much as the natural theology of Wordsworth (despite Modern Painters taking its epigraph from The Excursion). Although in some respects a poetry of post-Romantic transition, Ruskin's work also demonstrates a consistent interest in light – in ways that affirm its imaginative commerce with second-generation Romanticism – while exploring light's physical properties and dynamic environmental effects. Focusing in particular on his prize-winning poem ‘Salsette and Elephanta’ (1839), I suggest that Ruskin's poems establish possibilities that reach beyond merely received metaphorical meanings (light as redemptive telos and/or abstract condition of the visible) and instead look forward to the overdetermined stylisations typical of his mature prose works.

Citation

Garratt, P. (2016). Romantic Refractions: Light Effects in Ruskin's Poetry. Romanticism, 22(3), 279-288. https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2016.0289

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 30, 2015
Online Publication Date Sep 15, 2016
Publication Date Oct 1, 2016
Deposit Date Mar 5, 2015
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Romanticism
Print ISSN 1354-991X
Electronic ISSN 1750-0192
Publisher Edinburgh University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 22
Issue 3
Pages 279-288
DOI https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2016.0289

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