Romantic representations of the Peninsular Wars (1810-1820) – Imag(in)ing and re-creating the other Europe in English poetry

Abstract

Apparently contradictory concepts, History and Imagination sometimes ‘walk hand in hand’ and in ways that can be mutually illuminating or suggestive. Given the many bicentennial celebrations at present, one would do well to recall the succession of shattering but decisive events that took place in the Peninsula ‘just’ two hundred years ago; these events (a French invasion, guerrilla warfare, English rule and popular uprisings), did not only radically change the course of European history, and of political thought itself, but also produced a significant body of imaginative literature that refashioned cultural identities and the different arts. The focus of this essay will be on the transitional period between the Napoleonic Wars and the Liberal Uprisings in Europe (from 1810 to 1840), with an emphasis on the Iberian Peninsula and, particularly, on Portugal, and how the respective conflicts and their varied political, geographical and human scenarios impacted on the literature of the British Isles at this time. The essay will analyse both earlier and later Romantic texts, written by poets such as William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, Ana L. Barbauld, Byron, Percy B. Shelley, Felicia Hemans, Charlotte E. Tonna and the Brontës, in order to find evidence and explain these authors’ specific interest and engagement in those scenarios, as well as to trace the evolution of their political and intercultural thought, and respective literary representations of these foreign events. Conclusions will be reached as to how this ‘encounter’ with the Iberian Other not only radically reshaped those artists’ identity and respective writing but also eventually paved the way for later authors and their respective artistic experiments and encounters with a Europe which, by the late 1840s, was in conflict again. The essay will ground its analysis on recent theoretical criticism pertaining to the fields of Historical Romanticism, (Inter)Cultural Studies, Literary Imagology, and Poetry and Poetics.