That Dangerous Figure: Charles Lamb and the CriticsThe English poet Charles Lamb (1775-1834) stimulates reactions that often lie outside the boundaries of literary criticism, reactions that are often motivated by ideological, cultural or political concerns. He poses particularly difficult, even unanswerable, questions that often provoke intemperate anger or great affection in readers. Historically, the first critical misunderstanding of Lamb is to see him as a radical; later he is canonized a domestic saint; in the 1930s he is a reactionary bourgeois. More recently, he is understood as a conscious artist; first, by New Critics as a transcendent optimist, then, in the post-structuralist version, as a tormented soul creating his artifice out of the limitations of human life. This study, a comprehensive history of reactions to Lamb, proposes that perhaps Lamb is a literary 'trickster' who delights in raising just those contradictions of modern life which thosewho attempt a systematic style of criticism would like to ignore. |
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admirers aesthetic American argues argument Artificial Comedy attack Babbitt biography Birrell Blunden Books British canon Carlyle century Charles Lamb Bulletin Chasles Children's Literature cism Coleridge contemporary coterie criticism of Lamb defense of Lamb detractors dramatists E. V. Lucas Edmund Blunden Elia essays English Literature Essayists Essays of Elia F. R. Leavis friends G. H. Lewes George Hazlitt History human humor imagination indicates intellect John judgment Lamb's character Lamb's criticism Lamb's death Lamb's essays Lamb's letters Lamb's reputation Lamb's style Leavis Lewes literary criticism London Lucas Mario Praz Mary Lamb Mary's Monsman moral notes opinion original paradox period poem poetry poets political praise Praz prose Quincey Randel reader Reiman remarks Repplier Restoration comedy Romantic movement Romanticism Saint Charles Saintsbury seems sentimental serious Shakespeare Swinburne Swinburne's T. S. Eliot taste Thomas Thompson thought tion understanding vols Ward whimsical William William Hazlitt Woolf Wordsworth writer York