The central self

"In this closely argued book Dr Ball is concerned to analyse the imaginative process of self-understanding which emerged as a characteristic feature of English Romantic poetry and, acquiring fresh creative force in the Victorian period, has been transmitted to our own times as a determining principle of the contemporary imagination. Dr Ball relates her discussion to the distinction between the poet speaking directly in his own voice and the impulse to dramatised utterance 'the two modes of poetic expression conveniently summed up in Keats's contrasting terms 'egotistical sublime' and…