This much-desired land - Switzerland and British Romanticism

© 2017 Dr Steven Arthur HamptonThis thesis considers the diverse range of interrelations between the “much-desired land”, Switzerland, and British Romanticism, in writing by predominantly British and Swiss authors across a range of genres. It examines Switzerland as it was imagined and experienced during the Romantic period, and how this particular, Romantic idea of Switzerland began to take hold at this point in history. The selection of texts for this thesis not only reflects a focus on works which explicitly engage with Switzerland and Swiss themes of the period, but also a deliberate attempt to provide opportunities to traverse generic, linguistic and temporal boundaries. Works from each of the decades from the 1770s to the 1820s are considered, and take the form of novels, plays, travel literature, poetry, political and critical treatises, letters and journals, in English, French and German. The thesis analyses texts written by both canonical and non-canonical figures, including Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Coxe, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Helen Maria Williams, and Walter Scott in English; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Antoine-Marin Lemierre and Germaine de Staël in French; and Johann Jakob Bodmer in German. Works by Swiss authors in German and French have been selected because of their importance to the early development of Romanticism and to the subsequent understanding of it not only as a distinct literary mode of expression, but also as an entire Weltanschauung. The thesis therefore considers not only the ways in which Switzerland was constructed through and mediated by British Romanticism, but also how British Romanticism was shaped by ideas and practices originating in Switzerland. It seeks to demonstrate that Switzerland was a principal source of political, environmental and aesthetic inspiration not only for British Romanticism but also for a wider, pan-European Romanticism, and that Swiss writers played an indispensable role in facilitating this