Keeping Romanticism English: Thomas De Quincey Meets Allan Cunningham

Abstract

Closely examines De Quincey’s account of his meeting with the Scottish poet and essayist Cunningham. Argues that, read in light of recent critical attention to De Quincey’s role as a popularizer and disseminator of canonical Romantic literature and aesthetics, his treatment of this meeting and other experiences in Scotland engages his larger project of constructing and transmitting a specifically English Romantic canon around the figure of Wordsworth. Cautions that careful attention to the rhetoric in this brief text reveals both the fragility of such a construction and the hybridity of De Quincey’s literary identity.