British state romanticism

Frey contends that changing definitions of state power in the late Romantic period propelled authors to revisit the work of literature as well as the profession of authorship. Traditionally, critics have seen the Romantics as imaginative geniuses and have viewed the supposedly less imaginative character of the Romantics' late work as evidence of declining abilities. The author of this book argues, in contrast, that late Romanticism offers an alternative aesthetic model which adjusts authorship to work within an expanding and bureaucratising state.