Politics & Criticism: Why did the political and social standings of the author influence how a work is critiqued? Is this a fair judgement of the work and the author’s efforts?
Though Blackwood’s Magazine was politically conservative, it published the works of radicals supporting the British Romanticism movement such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley. Political upheaval began to strike in the first issue of the magazine’s revamp, which was the 1817 October issue with the article titled the Cockney School of Poetry no. 1. In this article, poets such as Keats and Hunt were accused of having low diction as well as using working class speech in their works. Furthermore, a significant event that caused further controversy was the death of John …show more content…
This is because it was something new to periodicals that had never been published or serialised into issues before. As a result, Blackwood’s Magazine brought a shift to the gothic tradition of the eighteenth century in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it has been argued that the magazine’s gothic works were constructed in a way that suited the style, format and the political ideals of the publication to cater for the newly wider literate audience, but also for the highly educated Tories. However, what needs to be considered is how gothic fiction became successful within a magazine that was politically driven. This popularity could be as a result of the introduction of what is known as the tale of terror. The tale of terror was a new type of fiction that graced the pages of Blackwood from 1818. It was a product of the gothic romances of the late eighteenth century that had proven to translate its popularity within the following century. Among these tales, there was an affiliation with everyday society. Therefore, these gothic tales had the purpose of creeping off the page and into the daily life of the reader, causing a significant impact on the readership and societal structures. This contrasts with the gothic tradition of the eighteenth century as fiction of this kind tended to remove itself from society, making the horror a separate