Michael O'Neill
Gleams and Dreams: Reflections on Romantic Rhyme
O'Neill, Michael
Authors
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 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(451 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in Romanticism. The Version of Record is available online at: http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/rom.2017.0319.
You might also like
Return of the Gift
(2018)
Book
The Romantic Poetry Handbook
(2017)
Book
The Lyric
(2017)
Book Chapter
Reflections on the Poetic
(2017)
Journal Article
John Keats in Context
(2017)
Book
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search