An exploration of the 'self-conscious poem', one that displays awareness of itself as poetry, in the work of the Romantic poets, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. A coda looks at some post-romantic poets, Yeats, Stevens, Auden, and Clampitt, in the light of the central themes.

`A helpful chapter on Wordsworth pursues the theme of Romantic anxiety about language, and again seeks to halt the deconstructionist mill that would grind everything to ironies of the same size and shape. ... The two chapters on Shelley are also substantial and intriguing. ... Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem is a subtly intriguing, clear-eyed, and always powerfully argued book. It offers a series of cogent, involved discussions around a ltitle-explored aspect of Romantic poetry, and in agile, elegant prose to boot.' Richard Marggraf Turley, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Romanticism `Micheal O'Neill's book collects his work on Romantic and post-Romantic poetry over the last decade. Reassembled in ten chapters they form a beautifully interlinking sequence which gathers to itself greater significance as the book progresses ... Pleasure is a powerful and revitalising force in this volume ... O'Neill's reading untangles without unravelling. Each close analysis is superbly concentrated ... Particularly valuable is the precision with which the book marks differences between Romantic voices ... Fostered by scholarship and slow time Romaticism and the Self-Conscious Poem is a searching work of lasting value. It is in all senses a masterpiece.' Jane Stabler, The Wordsworth Circle Autumn 98. `O'Neill's method is to let the poetry do the talking ... O'Neill's readings have superb emotional feel and technical know-how: they confirm that criticism has a highly developed, flexible, and above all capable language for talking about poetry - a language that has too often been shamefully neglected or disregarded. If you want to be reminded of that language at its most intricate and profitable - not to mention pleasureable - this is the book for you.' Nicola Trott, ROES vol 50, no 200 (1999) `Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem displays a refreshing desire to reassert the value of poetry, a desire to read poetry lovingly as poetry and not simply as another form of discourse caught in the ideological webs. O'Neill broadens the sense of poetry's alertness to itself and to experience. His trust in poetry is affecting, and he communicates that trust feelingly. Embracing poetry rather than debunking it, O'Neill sloughs off the illusion of disillusion and attempts simply to read, to read clearly, and to say what he has read.' Thomas Pfau, Review 21, 1999

A wide-ranging, sensitive, and lucid study offering a new perspective on the much-studied poetry of the Romantic period, explored in the context of its own self-consciousness and its consequent significance. Illuminates a number of the better-known and longer poems and revalues less familiar works such as The Excursion.

A wide-ranging, sensitive, and lucid study offering a new perspective on the much-studied poetry of the Romantic period, explored in the context of its own self-consciousness and its consequent significance. Illuminates a number of the better-known and longer poems and revalues less familiar works such as The Excursion.