ABSTRACT

Written by internationally established scholars of Thomas Moore’s music, poetry, and prose writing, Thomas Moore and Romantic Inspiration is a collection of twelve essays and a timely response to significant new biographical, historiographical and editorial work on Moore. This collection reflects the rich variety of cutting-edge work being done on this significant and prolific figure. Sarah McCleave and Brian Caraher have contributed an introduction that positions Moore in his own time (1800-1850), addresses subsequent neglect in the twentieth century, and contextualises the contemporary re-evaluation of Thomas Moore as a figure of considerable interdisciplinary artistic and cultural significance. The contributions to this collection establish Moore’s importance in the fields of Neoclassical and Romantic lyricism, musical performance, song-writing, postcolonial criticism, Orientalism and biographical writing— as well as defining the significance of his voice as an engaged social and political commentator of a strongly cosmopolitan and pluralistic inclination.

chapter |27 pages

Introduction: Thomas Moore and Romantic Inspiration Reassessed

Enlightened Tolerance and Interdisciplinary Poetics

part 1|63 pages

Moore’s Literary and Musical Inspirations

chapter 2|16 pages

Amongst Women 1

Thomas Moore and Classical Inspiration

chapter 3|13 pages

Moore’s Romantic Neoclassicism

chapter 4|20 pages

Moore, Stevenson, Bishop, and the Powers

A Series of Complex Relationships

part 2|73 pages

Moore’s Melodies, Airs, and Songs in Performative Contexts

chapter 5|13 pages

“Give them life by singing them about”

Moore’s Musical Performances in the English Drawing Room

chapter 6|20 pages

Problematizing Primitivism

Contesting Antiquarianism in Moore’s Irish Melodies

chapter 7|18 pages

“All her lovely companions are faded and gone”

How “The Last Rose of Summer” Became Europe’s Favourite Irish Melody

chapter 8|21 pages

“Those half creatures of Plato”

The Musical Inspiration behind Moore’s Sacred Songs and National Airs

part 3|64 pages

Moore’s Political Inspirations and Moore’s Poetry in Political Contexts

chapter 9|16 pages

Anacreon Moore and the Prince of Pleasure

George IV as Satiric Inspiration

chapter 10|12 pages

Moore’s Oriental Artifice

Mughal History, Irish Antiquarianism, and Romance in Lalla Rookh

chapter 11|18 pages

The “dull lapse of hopeless slavery”

European and Irish Politics in Moore’s Fables for the Holy Alliance, Rhymes on the Road, &c. &c.

chapter 12|16 pages

Grief Mingled with Execrations

Thomas Moore and the Death of Richard Brinsley Sheridan