Romantic Complexity

Jack Stillinger is Center for Advanced Study Professor of English, emeritus, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has published twenty-six earlier books, most recently Reading "The Eve of St. Agnes": The Multiples of Complex Literary Transaction.

"His intriguing interrogations open up realms of scholarship, and his treatments are authoritative and convincing."--Choice "This collection will please and inform readers. It is a sampler of the best of Stillinger, illustrating the critical consequences of fine editorial observations and modeling how seamless literary editing and literary analysis can be."--Keats-Shelley Journal "This enjoyable and engaging volume collects pieces from across a long and distinguished career, usefully gathering between hard covers several old familiars as well as a few less expected things."--Keats-Shelley Review "Jack Stillinger helpfully brings together in Romantic Complexity a selection of his most important critical writings from the past three decades. . . . This book gives us several opportunities to ponder the relationship of Romantic scholarship to broader technological and cultural change."--1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Inquiries in The Early Modern Era “Stillinger’s signature style and major strengths are in evidence in this collection. . . . [He] is still asking major questions, identifying central problems, and providing illuminating, sensible answers and solutions for students and professors of Romantic literature.”--Studies in Romanticism “A highly engaging read, full of arresting (and often quirky) insights, entertaining classroom reminiscence, and impressive scholarship that is the fruit of five decades’ sustained attention to the poets concerned.”--Forum of Modern Language Studies “The essays assembled for Romantic Complexity show Jack Stillinger working and writing through a half century of critical conversation, often in the thick of controversies. At each turn he has not just addressed the major, most urgent questions; he has shaped the discussion with erudite intelligence, textual rigor, bracing skepticism, and exemplary generosity. His students and colleagues will welcome Romantic Complexity as ‘the best of Stillinger’ on a wide range of concerns, but especially on the three poets who have focused his sharp regard, loving attention, and professional enthusiasm.”--Susan J. Wolfson, professor of English, Princeton University

• Preface   viiPart 1: Keats Essays1. What Keats Is About   32. Keats and Wordsworth   203. Keats and Coleridge   414. Reading Keats's Plots   625. Keats's Extempore Effusions and the Question of Intentionality   776. Multiple Readers, Multiple Texts, Multiple Keats   897. The "Story" of Keats   112Part 2: Wordsworth and Coleridge8. Textual Primitivism and the Editing of Wordsworth   1299. Pictorialism and Matter-of-Factness in Coleridge's Poems of Somerset   15210. The Multiple Versions of Coleridge's Poems: How Many Mariners Did Coleridge Write?   16611. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Shaggy Dog: The Novelty of Lyrical Ballads (1798)   183Part 3: Romantics and the Classroom12. Fifty-nine Ways of Reading Ode on a Grecian Urn   20113. Refurbish or Perish   20814. Glossing the Romantics: Texts for Students   21515. The Romantics and Sputnik   222Abbreviations   225Notes   227References   243Credits   255Index   257