Charles Lamb as the Janus of Romanticism in ‘New Year’s Eve

Abstract

Offers a reading of the essay that emphasizes the function of the three-part structure, each movement marked by an allusion to New Year’s bells: Elia’s looking back nostalgically to childhood, looking forward with aversion to death, and, finally reemploying Charles Cotton’s mythological personification of the two-faced Janus as an emblem of Romantic synthesis. Notes how, unlike Janus, Elia initially has not been able to look upon the “Newborn year” with confidence because his protective retreat into childhood innocence and indulgence in paternal fantasies is thwarted by painful present reality. Observes that in “Dream Children,” the faithful Bridget, whose name is taken from the Celtic goddess of fertility and poetry, becomes Elia’s social inspiration within the present; in “New Year’s Eve,” literary conviviality redeems the present, as Elia initially condemns his winequaffing self, but as he warms with the delight of old poetry and the companionship of friends, welcomes the New Year with new-found self-esteem.