This book examines the theme of indolence in Romantic poetry and demonstrates the rich variety of experiments preformed upon it by a quartet of poets, which focuses on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats.
Majestic Indolence offers itself as an unashamed defence of old-style aesthetic formalism ... the book offers a highly illuminating perspective on a dominant but neglected trope of romanticism. The chapter on 'Shelley's Versions of Pastoral', focussing on the poetry's verbs, is a model of scholarly rigour and sensitivity. Here the reading reaches beyond its conceptual limits to effect a brilliant commentary on the historicity of romantic language.
