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Gleams and Dreams: Reflections on Romantic Rhyme

O'Neill, Michael

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Authors

Michael O'Neill



Abstract

‘Gleam’ and ‘dream’: the rhyme performs a quintessential Romantic pairing and serves as a window opening on to the topic of rhyme in poetry of the period, not least through the serendipitous way in which it off-rhymes with the word ‘rhyme’ itself. Rhyme is a matter of spanning or failing to span abysses in Romantic poetry as much as it is an earnest of some ultimate harmony or fulfilment. The word ‘gleam’ suggests an intimations-inducing flash of light; ‘dream’, for its part, points towards a possibly insubstantial source or vehicle of embodiment or quest or longing. On the face of it, the coupling may seem as hackneyed as any scorner of Romantic verbal effects might wish. Yet Romantic poetry generates an ‘electric life’, in Shelley's words in A Defence of Poetry, from this and comparable verbal interknittings, The essay pays particular attention to the rhyme of ‘gleam’ and ‘dream’ in various poems, and then to rhyme's intratextual and intertextual effects in poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge; it returns at its close to themes of aspiration and affirmation often resonating through Romantic rhyme.

Citation

O'Neill, M. (2017). Gleams and Dreams: Reflections on Romantic Rhyme. Romanticism, 23(2), 123-132. https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2017.0319

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 12, 2016
Online Publication Date Jul 1, 2017
Publication Date Jul 1, 2017
Deposit Date Jul 11, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Romanticism
Print ISSN 1354-991X
Electronic ISSN 1750-0192
Publisher Edinburgh University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 23
Issue 2
Pages 123-132
DOI https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2017.0319

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