Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry

The interrelationship of apocalypse and millennium is a dominant concern in British Romanticism. The Book of Revelation provides a model of history in which apocalypse is followed by millennium, but the major Romantic poets - Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley - question and even at times undermine the validity of this notion. In this impressive study, Morton Paley illuminates this central preoccupation and examines the poets' conflicting answers to the question: where is history going?