An 'Ungentle' Punk: Revisiting Charles Lamb's Bookishness (original) (raw)
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Romantic Imprints. 14th BARS Conference (Cardiff, 16-19 July 2015). Charles Lamb's Elizabethanizing
BARS, XIV Conference, 2015
My paper aims at a re-evaluation of Charles Lamb’s ‘Curious Fragments’, which have re- ceived little if no attention in the eld of Romantic Studies. Yet these specimens provide a signi cant example of a particular attitude on the part of the author, which E. V. Lucas has labelled as ‘Elizabethanizing’. In ‘Curious Fragments’, as well as in the tragedy John Wood- vil and the Falsta Letters, Lamb enacted a ‘literary’ approximation with some of the au- thors he cherished most, namely Robert Burton and omas Browne. Unlike the notori- ous ‘forger poets’, though, Lamb did not seek to actually present these extracts as authentic. e literary process he enacted is rather that of Impersonation, which Carl Klaus has point- ed to as the main and most interesting feature of the personal essay. My argument’s ulti- mate goal is that of underlining the essayistic features of the ‘Curious Fragments’, in order to discuss the intimate, almost delicate, interrelation between Lamb and the Literature of the Early Modern Period. On one level, my analysis will focus on stylistic features, such as archaisms in spelling, morphological and lexical peculiarities. Yet from a historical per- spective the prominence of these stylistic features will be re-evaluated, since, I argue, the main aim of the author is not of convincing, or deceiving the reader, but to create a distinc- tive voice, a sort of ventriloquizing that allows Lamb to demonstrate his debt to the prose masters of the Early Modern Period.
Charles Lamb's Empirical Elegy
Late Romanticism Conference, Leuven, 2019
This paper considers the ways in which Charles Lamb’s essays elegize an empirical idea of truth. For eighteenth-century essayists schooled in empiricism, such as Addison, Hume, and Johnson, the essayist encourages and moderates communication at the borderline of systematic science and the public sphere. For Lamb, however, the public sphere, which had already fragmented through the expansion of print media and a rapid increase in the dissemination of knowledge, could no longer function as the ground for epistemic solidarity. As the social intellect moved indoors, into the private domain of consciousness and individual imagination, the essayist came to mediate less between social formations and more between idealised phenomenological realms of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ experience. In aestheticising the communicative intellect of the eighteenth-century essayists, the identity doublings and performances of the Romantic familiar essay acquire significance as the hypostatised others of a lost wholeness. In elegizing this loss, Lamb’s essays play across the pragmatic empiricism of Hume and Johnson and the transcendental aesthetics of Romantic writers such as Coleridge and Shelley. In Lamb’s hands, the essay is neither a pragmatic intervention in the public sphere, nor a lyrical attempt to transcend it, but something intermediate. Lamb responds to sceptical impasse with a dreamy refinement of empiricism: contemplative, nostalgic and elegiac, producing an imagined solidarity not through Hume’s custom-based intersubjectivity or Schlegel’s aesthetic harmonisation (through which ‘transcendental poetry … emerges as satire in the absolute difference of ideal and real, hovers in between as elegy, and ends as idyll with the absolute identity of the two’), but through a sophisticated form of literary enchantment in which the ‘twilight of dubiety’ represents an indeterminate space between the poetry of imagination and the prose of everyday conversation.
Empire, Coleridge, and Charles Lamb's Consumer Imagination
Studies in English Literature 43.3: 815-43, 2003
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PRESENTING PATHOS THROUGH HUMOUR: A CRITICAL STUDY OF SOME SELECTED ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB
Charles Lamb is entitled to a place as an essayist beside Montaigne, Sir Thomas Browne, Steele and Addison. He unites many of the characteristics of each of these writers-refined and exquisite humour, a genuine and cordial vein of pleasantry and heart-touching pathos. His fancy is distinguished by great delicacy and tenderness; and even his conceits are imbued with human feeling and passion. Pathos and humour frequently jostle each other in his essays. There is a curious mingling of these two ingredients in his work. Laughter is quickly followed by tears of sympathy in many of his essays. Sometimes there are alternations of humour and pathos, and sometimes the two elements exist simultaneously in the same passage which has both a comic and a pathetic side. Charles Lamb is widely known as the master of personal essays of which Montaigne is the greatest exponent. His essays are composed in Essays of Elia and Last essays of Elia. His essays are marked by self-revelation, humour and pathos and a conversational manner. Lamb delights the reader with his personal details, genial humour, gracious personality and pleasant inclination. His scale of subject matter is astonishingly different. The inventive insights of Lamb's personal essays obtain its critical and innovative impulse uniformly from these traditions which superimpose in the comprehensive diversities of English essays. Lamb's essays are actually social criticisms which oppose; and even subvert the social and cultural configurations that restrain the preferences of individuals. As the narrator he puts in formidable management to oppose the hierarchical structures that interfere with individual freedom. The essay as a literary context resists the inquiry of times and the critical sensibilities of generations. In the romantic epoch, the principle of individualism and creative consideration acquire strengthened in the class of personal essay like Essays of Elia by Lamb. In these essays the centre platform is held by the various shades of the essayist's self-reflective subjectivities which establish a thorough record of memories, emotions, embarrassment and imaginations. Lamb assumes the role of a commentator and narrator in his essays. His narratives blend pictures of self and others in realistic condition. His essays portray a projection of his own self which is amiable and friendly. He attracts his readers by creating a confidential manner in his essays which as a matter of fact functions like a discourse between the essayist and his readers. The experience is theatrical in which Lamb's personality is dramatized through various means and revealed to the readers. His essays are the
The Romantic period was a time in which prose writing witnessed a rapid development. Writers such as Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt changed the styles and topics of the eighteenth-century essay. They also created new forms of writing in which their personal impressions and the subjects of everyday life were central. But the best-known essayist of the 1820s was Charles Lamb. His essays gave him a very high reputation. The element of his self-reflection in his essays gave a personal touch to the readers that they took him to their hearts. This paper explores the literary essays and various elements that made his autobiographical aspect visible and tangible to the readers.
Essaying the Personal: A Study of Essays of Elia
Charles Lamb is generally considered the master of personal essays of which Montaigne is the greatest exponent. His essays are collected in Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia. In literary history he is remembered as the Prince of English essayists. His essays are marked by self- revelation, humour and pathos, and a conversational style. Lamb delights the reader with his personal details, genial humour, amiable personality and sweetness of disposition. His range of subject matter is amazingly diverse. Personal essay as a genre evolved from a curious convergence of German and English traditions of essay writing. The German tradition reached English literary domain through the influence of Montaigne who has been considered a literary model since the time of Bacon. The German tradition of essay as a critique of ideology or an expression of commitment blends with the English tradition of the essay as a paradigm of personal freedom in creativity manifest in the history of democracy. The creative insights of Lamb’s personal essays derive its critical and innovative impulse equally from these traditions which superimpose in the genric diversities of English essays. Lamb’s essays are in fact social criticisms which resist and even subvert the social and cultural structures that restrict the choices of individuals. As the narrator he puts in formidable agency to resist the hierarchical structures that meddle with individual liberty.