Romanticism and Anthony Trollope

Most people who study Romanticism suppose the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope has little or nothing to do with Romantic literary thought, except perhaps opposition to it. Most people who study Trollope agree. Romanticism and Anthony Trollope argues that these suppositions are mistaken, reflecting erroneous ideas about Romanticism or about Trollope---or perhaps about both.

L.J. Swingle invites reexamination of popular assumptions about the nature of nineteenth-century literary art, generally, and, especially, reconsideration of the idea that Romanticism and what is called Victorian Realism are fundamentally antithetical. Romantic writers and Trollope share basic assumptions about how human beings think; and, as a result, they also share uneasy notions about the substantiality of human relationships, particularly marriage. Swingle shows that our understanding of Trollope is clarified and enriched when we think about his work in relation to Romantic literary art; and, as well, it shows that we gain a better understanding of Romanticism by thinking about it in connection with Trollope. At a time when the resurrection of Trollope's writings is increasingly common and popular enthusiasm for his work is high, this book will be especially welcomed. Romanticists, students of fiction, literary historians, and people working in nineteenth-century cultural studies will find its insights important and provocative, leading not only to a revaluation of Trollope's work but to a rethinking of our stereotypes of Romanticism.