Beyond Byron, legitimising Lamb : The cultural context of Caroline Lamb's life and works.

This interdisciplinary thesis is concerned with the works by and cultural perception of Lady Caroline Lamb (1785-1828). Focusing upon her three published novels, Glenarvon (1816), Graham Hamilton (1822) and Ada Reis (1823), I will argue that, when considering the texts in the social and political context of Lamb's life, the novels can be read as a critique of the moral bankruptcy and political ineffectiveness of her milieu of the Whig aristocracy, in which she includes herself and her notorious affair with Lord Byron. Though Lamb's fictional portraits of Byron, particularly in Glenarvon, have been read as an expression of her spleen, they are more than that: it is a continuation of her sophisticated critique of contemporary Whig morality and politics.A close reading of the texts will discuss Lamb's choice of the novel as a vehicle for her critique as one that is informed by the orientation of her writing towards the intended readership of her own milieu. This thesis will offer a new perspective upon how much Lamb was prepared to willingly submit her own experiences and that of her immediate family to the scrutiny of public gaze as a means to ensure the efficacy of her communicative intent, and how the construction of the novels reveals an hitherto unsuspected sophistication in the assessment of her readership and of the most effective vehicle by which to reach them. This thesis will also undertake a reassessment of Lamb's cultural legacy as an hysterical woman, fatally obsessed with Byron, and how this perception of her has diminished her reputation as a writer, undermined her critique of the aristocracy, and which has been exacerbated by biographical and fictional representations. Thus this thesis considers Lamb as a writer of significant interest that goes beyond the inhibiting presence of Byron by taking into account the wider cultural and political moment of production to offer a more productive reading her work

The politics of bestial imagery in satire, 1789-1820

This thesis examines the widespread use of bestial imagery in satirical verse, prose and prints published between 1789 – 1820, through a study of Shelley, Spence, Gillray, Gifford, Robinson, Catherine Ann Dorset, Thelwall, Eaton, and Wolcot. The thesis asks why these writers and printers used animal metaphors so frequently, but moreover, what impact the use of this imagery had on the political landscape of satire in the period. Recent criticism has focussed on the historical and political contexts of Romantic-era satire, and this thesis follows that criticism with an historicist methodology, combining literary, historical and political approaches. Furthermore, the thesis analyses verse, prose and pictorial satires as contributing to the same political discourse and as doing so in closely related cultural arenas. This thesis claims originality on the basis that not only the use of animal imagery has a significant impact on how both contemporary and modern readers interpret its political meanings and contexts, but also that this is an argument that has not yet been posited by other critics. In addition, this thesis argues that through bestial metaphors, satirical writers and artists create a community wherein imagery is exchanged, developed and manipulated, and that this practice of cultural exchange significantly shapes those satires’ historical contexts. Each of the thesis’ five chapters focuses on a major satiric animal metaphor, whereby close readings of satires are offered alongside wider political and historical contexts. Consequently, this thesis provides a map of the most common satiric animal metaphors and their concomitant politics, and in doing so creates a new critical framework in which the growing interest in Romantic- period satire can be further developed.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

18th-Century Blues: Exploring the Melancholy Mind

'Before Depression' is a three-year research project by the English departments of the Universities of Northumbria and Sunderland and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. This exhibition brings together a range of artists who treated 'the blues' in their work. They include the influential Albrecht Durer, William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, Joseph Wright, Thomas Rowlandson, William Blake, Maria Cosway, Thomas Jones, Jacob van Ruisdael, Caspar David Friedrich, Charles Le Brun, Johann Caspar Lavater, John Constable, John Martin and local artist Luke Clennell. Some were themselves depressive, some were interested in medical matters connected with the condition, some painted melancholy scenes, some even made fun of 'depression' for satirical purposes, and some painted friends and well-known figures who we know suffered from periodic low spirits. 18th-Century Blues offers a sometimes lively, sometimes sombre but, we hope, always thought-provoking insight into how people dealt with a common human experience two hundred years ago. Works are kindly loaned by The National Gallery, London; Tate; The National Portrait Gallery; The British Museum, London; The Wellcome Library, London; The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester; Derby Museums and Art Gallery; The Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (Tyne and Wear Museums); The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University and Petworth House, The Egremont Collection (acquired in lieu of tax by HM Treasury in 1957 and subsequently transferred to The National Trust)

Beyond Byron, legitimising Lamb : the cultural context of Caroline Lamb's life and works

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

The construction of a reputation for madness: the case study of Lady Caroline Lamb

This article scrutinizes Lamb’s historical reputation as the archetypal female hysteric. The scope of the paper is not conclusively to prove or disprove the actual state of Lamb’s mental health, but to examine the context in and the procedures by which Lamb was diagnosed as being mentally unstable and how her own declarations to the contrary could be legitimately ignored. The article also examines the way in which biographies of her life have gone some way to attributing to Lamb the attributes of her own statement about Byron, in being ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. The repetition and highlighting of the more melodramatic episodes of Lamb’s life, whilst being of interest, have presented an unbalanced view of her that undermines her intellectual commitment to her writing. Lamb is here compared with her contemporary, Rosina Bulwer Lytton, whose own reputation for insanity stems from a similar process of de-legitimisation which both authors attempted to combat through the medium of writing