Introduction “Poetry Fetter’D Fetters The Human Race

Unfettering Poetry: The Fancy in British Romanticism is a history and analysis of the poetic faculty of the Fancy and its emanation in the poetry and poetics of the Romantic Period from, roughly, 1770 to 1840. These years, of course, are marked by major revolutions in Europe and America that produced a generalized critique of social institutions. Romantic art by and large reflected this politically charged temperament and attempted to catch the urgency of a need for change in the lives of citizens and the structure of institutions seen as repressive. Indeed, it often proposed such changes by means of visionary poetry; it also satirized the world as it was found and, more simply, acknowledged those disenfranchised members of society whom the revolutionary temperament championed. In this sense, most Romantic art came into being under the sign of hope for social and individual betterment. What has yet to be realized is that this politically radical poetics was described and analyzed, both in its own time and later, under the rubric of “the Fancy,” a poetic principle the effect of which poets and critics, then and now, attempted to diffuse by forms of belittlement. This poetic faculty, its origins, its characteristics, and its manifestations in poetry of Romanticism and later, is the subject of this book.