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Department of English Studies

Romantic Dialogues and Legacies Research Group

This Research Group explores
 
(a)    interactions between Romantic writers

(b)   interactions between Romantic writers and other writers and traditions, later and earlier

 
It encourages collaboration between staff, post-doctoral scholars, and postgraduates at Durham, and with scholars and critics at other Universities. It communicates its research findings to academic and public audiences in the UK and internationally.  
 
The Research Group has particular interests in:  first-, second- and third-generation Romantic poetry; Shelley and his circle; Byron and his representation in later literature and film; Romantic literature’s response to Dante, Spenser, Milton and Pope; Romantic-period fiction and its influence; Romantic poetics and philosophy, and literary theory; the influence of Romantic literature on Victorian and on twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature.
 
It was set up in 2005 in the Department of English Studies, with Professor Michael O’Neill as Director and Dr Mark Sandy and Dr Sarah Wootton as Co-Directors.
 
With the support of the Department of English Studies and Durham’s Institute of Advanced Study, the Research Group has now sponsored the following lecture series: The Legacies of Romanticism (2006), Modelling the Self (2007–8), Venice and the Cultural Imagination since 1800 (2009–10). Each lecture series has led to an edited collection of essays: in a special issue of Romanticism (guest edited Michael O’Neill), a special issue of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net (guest edited Mark Sandy and Sarah Wootton), and Venice and the Cultural Imagination, edited Michael O’Neill, Mark Sandy, and Sarah Wootton (Pickering & Chatto, 2012). The Research Group has also organised a further lecture series on The Persistence of Beauty: Victorians to Moderns (2012).

PhD theses on relevant topics that have been supervised in recent years include work on Wallace Stevens as a post-Romantic poet, Wordsworth and Coleridge’s response to Shakespeare, chaos and control in the poetry of Shelley, Byron, and Yeats, Gary Snyder and Romanticism, and the nineteenth-century novel and screen adaptation.

Colleagues in English Studies associated with the Research Group include:

Dr David Ashurst
Professor Timothy Clark
Professor Pamela Clemit
Dr Simon James
Dr Michael Mack
Dr Helen O’Connell
Professor Stephen Regan
Dr Gillian Skinner
Dr Paige Tovey