Front cover image for Thomas Hood and nineteenth-century poetry : work, play and politics

Thomas Hood and nineteenth-century poetry : work, play and politics

Sara Lodge
"This is the first modern critical study of Thomas Hood, a hugely popular and influential nineteenth-century poet, editor, cartoonist, and voice of social protest. A close friend of Charles Lamb and John Hamilton Reynolds, but also acclaimed by Dickens, the Brownings, and the Rossettis, Hood bridges the years between 1820 and 1845; his quirky, accessible, diverse output offers fascinating insights for Romanticists and Victorianists alike." "Thomas Hood and nineteenth-century poetry starts by examining the early nineteenth-century print culture into which Hood was born and analyses the dynamic effect of this and his dissenting heritage on his approach to language and play. Sara Lodge goes on to look at the London Magazine and the performative strategies Hood shares with Lamb, Reynolds, and other periodical colleagues, and investigates dramatic monologue, and nineteenth-century 'minor' theatre as well as contemporary grotesque art and literature. One chapter is exclusively devoted to exploring the cultural politics of Hood's trademark puns. The final section discusses the battle over leisure in the early nineteenth century, presenting Hood's play as a critical intervention on the 'labour question' that continues to resonate in the modern academic environment, where the dominant model of productivity undervalues play and pleasure in literary study."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2007
Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2007
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xiii, 216 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9780719076268, 9780719087875, 0719076269, 0719087872
154789210
Material backgrounds : print, dissent, and the social society
Hood and the minor : at the London Magazine and after
Performing the city : the audience as subject
A common centaur : Hood and the grotesque
Pun and pleasure : Hood's tied trope
Sine qua non-sense : work, play, and criticism