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Charles Lamb’s Imperfect Solitudes
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Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia (1820–25) are often seen as minor contributions to the Romantic tradition, and the essays themselves playfully foreground their own minority. This article traces the self-deprecating humour of the Elia essays to the writer’s perceived inability to generate for himself the kind of self-enclosure which is envisioned by the Romantic lyric. It reads solitude as both a wished-for state and a concept under formation in the Elia writings, and argues that humour – with its masks, alternate selves, and performance of roles – offers Lamb an alternative to the more serious authority of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and a way of ‘making do’ with imperfect environmental conditions for creativity.
Title: Charles Lamb’s Imperfect Solitudes
Description:
Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia (1820–25) are often seen as minor contributions to the Romantic tradition, and the essays themselves playfully foreground their own minority.
This article traces the self-deprecating humour of the Elia essays to the writer’s perceived inability to generate for himself the kind of self-enclosure which is envisioned by the Romantic lyric.
It reads solitude as both a wished-for state and a concept under formation in the Elia writings, and argues that humour – with its masks, alternate selves, and performance of roles – offers Lamb an alternative to the more serious authority of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and a way of ‘making do’ with imperfect environmental conditions for creativity.
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