Incorporating extensive research on classification systems and reception history as well as on literary forms themselves romanticism and the uses of genre demonstrates how new ideas about the role and status of genre influenced not only authors but also publishers editors reviewers and readers the focus is on poetry but a wider spectrum of genres is considered a central theme being the relationship hierarchical competitive combinatory between genres among the topics addressed . This book reappraises the role of genre and genre theory in british romantic literature analysing numerous examples from 1760 to 1830 it examines the generic innovations and experiments which propel the romantic revolution in literature but also the fascination with archaic forms such as the ballad sonnet epic and romance whose revival and transformation make romanticism a retro movement as well as a revolutionary one the tension between the drives to make it old . Incorporating extensive research on classification systems and reception history as well as on literary forms themselves romanticism and the uses of genre demonstrates how new ideas about the role. Perhaps the most apparent of the contradictions of genre in romanticism is what duff describes as a tension between the drive to make it old and make it new p viii the battle between ancient and modern literary models pre exists romanticism but duff shows how these contrary drives informed the literature of the period the romantics inherited neoclassicism but also quarrelled with their inheritance choosing often to skip back a generation or two behind neoclassicism