Choice Review

Though apocalypse and millennialism are natural subjects for a scholarly study, this book disappoints. Paley (Univ. of California, Berkeley) has no trouble demonstrating, first, that the major Romantic poets were concerned with apocalypse in some way and, second, that despite their best efforts they were unable to imagine fully and coherently how apocalypse could be succeeded by millennium. The author devotes separate chapters of varying length to each of six male poets. Perhaps not surprisingly, the discussion of Shelley comes off best, but all the chapters are compromised by the author's tendency to include a miscellany of information about publication, reception, and poetic imagery--material that in many cases proves to be either marginal to the argument or too obvious to warrant the extended discussion devoted to it. However, Paley writes in a clear, jargon-free style that will give upper-division undergraduates no trouble, so libraries supporting serious study of the Romantics will probably want to purchase this book. How much it advances the discussion of its topic--as compared to, for example, James Chandler's Wordsworth's Second Nature (1984), David V. Erdman's Blake: Prophet against Empire (1969), or many of the books or articles Paley includes in his excellent bibliography--is another question. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. M. Minor; Morehead State University