ABSTRACT
Literary production rarely reflects dominant models of Romantic authorship and their promotion of the primacy of authorial instinct, spontaneity, and autonomy. Closer examination of individual works reveals different ways in which these models are subverted by the material conditions and varying motivations of multiple agents involved in the production of literature. In revising The Loves of the Angels, Thomas Moore’s substitution of Islam for Christianity at the poem’s religious foundation represents a flexible mode of authorship, where its broad social and cultural formulation is apparent. This revision was inspired by critical accusations of impiety and blasphemy against the poem and a concurrent awareness of the unprotected copyright status of blasphemous literature. Comparing Moore and Lord Byron’s differing responses to critical, public, and legal threats to authorial autonomy illustrates the contingency of Romantic authorship and helps to expose the limitations of Romanticism’s self-representations. This chapter preserves and extends the methodological focuses of the previous chapters in its analysis of the intersections of authorship, copyright, and textual fluidity.
