Nervous Reactions

Addresses how Victorian receptions of Romanticism and Romantic writers were shaped by notions of "nervousness." Nervous Reactions considers Victorian responses to Romanticism, particularly the way in which the Romantic period was frequently constructed in Victorian-era texts as a time of nervous or excitable authors (and readers) at odds with Victorian values of self-restraint, moderation, and stolidity. Represented in various ways-as a threat to social order, as a desirable freedom of feeling,