During the Romantic era, especially in Italy, performers known as improvvisatori and improvvisatrici extemporised poetry in public in response to subjects requested by their audiences. This type of performance fascinated Grand Tourists from northern Europe, who reported on poetic improvisers in hundreds of travel accounts, journals, letters, and periodical articles. By uncovering historical data and interpreting literary texts, Professor Esterhammer identifies patterns in the evolving responses of English, German, French, and Russian writers to the experience of improvisation. She explores how improvisation interacts with Romantic ideas about genius, spontaneity, orality, and emotional expressiveness, and relates to evolving concepts of gender and nation. Esterhammer goes on to interpret the influence that the figure of the poetic improviser had in nineteenth-century English and European fiction. In this context, the improvvisatore casts new light on conflicts between poetic genius and socio-economic constraints, and on the evolution of the Bildungsroman.

Angela Esterhammer explores how the professional practice of improvisation contributes to Romantic ideas and explores poetic improvisation in nineteenth-century fiction.

About the Author
Angela Esterhammer is Professor in the Department of English, University of Zurich and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Western Ontario. Previous books include Romantic Poetry. The Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages (edited, 2002) and The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism (2000).

Reviews
'Romanticism and Improvisation is on all counts an original and valuable study of improvisation as a trans-European phenomenon ...' Monatshefte
'This book should be of general interest to scholars of the romantic period, but of especial import to those concerned with the emergence of the idea of romantic poetic genius, the development of national concepts of literature, the impact of mass print culture, and romantic audiences.' BARS Bulletin & Review



Book Information
ISBN 9780521897099
Author Angela Esterhammer
Format Hardback
Page Count 290
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 590g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 160mm * 22mm