W.F. Deacon and his Revision of Romanticism in Warreniana through Literary Parody and Advertising Campaigns to Promote Blacking

Abstract

This study aims to reassess William Frederick Deacon (1799-1845) and his work Warreniana (1824) by demonstrating that although it is a work of textual parody, its apparent triviality conceals a sophisticated exercise in literary criticism, constituting a valuable contemporary commentary on Romanticism. The collection presents a witty and sophisticated exercise in criticism of the literature and style of its period, being composed of texts attributed to a selection of Romantic authors supposedly promoting a very trivial product: Warren’s blacking (shoe polish). Deacon thus acts as another Romantic critic, albeit a more original and unconventional one. Due to space constraints, this paper will focus only on the parody of the poetic style of British romantic authors. The parody of their journal style will be analysed in another article.