About

Brian Goldberg is an Associate Professor of English at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. He earned his Ph.D. in English from Indiana University in 1995. His research focuses on restoration and eighteenth-century literature, nineteenth-century British literature, British romantic literature, poetry, and poetic form. Goldberg has contributed to the understanding of Romantic professionalism, the aesthetics of the marketplace in Romantic poetry, and the professional identities of poets such as Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake, Byron, and Southey. His work explores themes such as the making of Romantic professionalism, the role of architecture in Romanticism, and the economic and social contexts of 19th-century literature. Goldberg has published extensively, including articles in scholarly journals and contributions to edited volumes, and has been recognized with awards such as the Ruth R. Christie Distinguished Teaching Award in 2006 and the Council of Graduate Students Outstanding Faculty Award in Spring 2011.

Research topics

• Art
• Philosophy
• Humanities
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Art history
• Social Science
• Aesthetics
• Epistemology
• Law
• Literature
• World Wide Web

Selected publications

• Byron Among the English Poets: Literary Tradition and Poetic Legacy; The Shelleys and the Brownings: Textual Reimaginings and the Question of Influence

  European Romantic Review · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Literature
  • Art
  • Philosophy
  PublisherDOI

• For the rain, for the wind

  Routledge eBooks · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Art

  The entire material and built culture of the ancien régime—works of art and craftsmanship, even the city itself—were symbols and reminders of a reviled royal and theocratic power structure. Grégoire’s project was to develop a conceptual structure in which things might be weighed and balanced, their culpability measured against their “beauty.” The artist Zoe Leonard retreated to Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1992. Mourning the recent death from AIDS of her friend David Wojnarowicz, and so many others, she began to sew up and embellish the empty skins of just-eaten fruits. At first it was a way to think about and remember David, but eventually the practice incorporated all kinds of loss—of friendship, shared purpose, certainty. Slices of orange peels are stitched together with red and green string, A label on the peel states the brand of the fruit.Zoe Leonard. Photo: Graydon Wood.

  PublisherDOI

• Charlotte Smith, William Hayley, and Discriminated Anguish

  The Wordsworth Circle · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Computer Science
  • Art
  PublisherDOI

• Book reviews

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2019-12-31

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Thomas Chatterton and Neglected Genius, 1760‐1830. By Daniel Cook. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2013. xv + 259 p. £58 (hb). ISBN 978‐1‐137‐33248‐6. £55 (pb). ISBN 978‐1‐349‐46176‐9.

  Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies · 2018-05-22

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Poetry and Social Class

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2018-10-09

  book1st authorCorresponding

  During the Romantic period, poetry and social class were intimately connected. Many of the period’s political arguments were about the social hierarchy, and poetic writing often reflected these debates. A poet’s social origin also had much to do with what he or she wrote and how that writing might be received. Fundamentally, audiences assumed that a legitimate poet would have a classical education unavailable to writers below a certain rank. Poets regularly attempted to challenge perceived class distinctions, sometimes by experimenting with the voices and viewpoints of other ranks, sometimes by seeking social mobility in the literary marketplace. Attempts at class transit could be treated as dangerous insofar as they raised the prospect of social levelling, or as welcome if they were taken to indicate that British society rewarded merit or that that the nation’s ranks were closely linked rather than antagonistic and divided.

  PublisherDOI

• Debt, Taxes, and Reform in Walter Scott’s Count Robert of Paris

  Nineteenth-Century Literature · 2016-12-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Brian Goldberg, “Debt, Taxes, and Reform in Walter Scott’s Count Robert of Paris” (pp. 343–368) Walter Scott’s Count Robert of Paris (1831) treats “debt” in a way determined by the author’s response to the Reform Crisis of 1830–1832. Scott’s solution to the reformist impulse was the reintroduction of the income tax. He believed that an income tax would give the nation’s elites an opportunity to acknowledge their duties and contribute their fair share toward the payment of the national war debt, thus stabilizing the economy and eliminating a crucial motive for reform legislation. Count Robert of Paris reimagines this solution by translating the nation’s relationship to government debt into a system of personal indebtedness. While the novel’s main characters, the Anglo-Saxon mercenary Hereward and the Crusader Count Robert, assume their roles in a working hierarchy through the assumption and discharge of debt, these developments take place in a dystopian fictional world that reflects Scott’s apprehensions about reform. In Count Robert’s late-eleventh-century Constantinople, leaders evade responsibility, justice is inscrutable or impossible to achieve, and the city is populated by Crusaders and Byzantines who are unwilling or unable to recognize or pay what they owe.

  PublisherDOI

• Wordsworth as Professional Author

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2015-01-22

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Writing Romanticism: Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, 1784–1807

  The European Legacy · 2015-12-23

  article1st authorCorresponding

  "Writing Romanticism: Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, 1784–1807." The European Legacy, 21(2), pp. 222–223

  PublisherDOI

• Love’s Vision

  The European Legacy · 2015-06-04

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In Love’s Vision, Troy Jollimore seeks to develop a philosophy of love out of two alternatives, “rationalism” and “anti-rationalism.” The rationalist claim is that lovers love because of properties...

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Stanley Shostak

  University of Pittsburgh

  4 shared

• Donald J. Dietrich

  3 shared

• Arthur B. Shostak

  Drexel University

  2 shared

• Brayton Polka

  2 shared

• Peter Whitney

  2 shared

• Nataša Bakić-Mirić

  University of Priština - Kosovska Mitrovica

  2 shared

• M. Kuznetsov

  2 shared

• Boris Gubman

  Tver State University

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Ruth R. Christie Distinguished Teaching Award (2006)
• Council of Graduate Students Outstanding Faculty Award (Spri…