Waterloo, Napoleon, and the Vision of Peace in Louisa Stuart Costello’s ‘The Maid of the Cyprus Isle.’
Ruppert, Timothy. 2012. Studies in Romanticism 51, no. 4: 555–78.
This text examines the poetry of Louisa Stuart Costello, a Romantic, Anglo-Irish poet, whose work, ‘The Maid of Cyprus Isle’, is often considered conventional until viewed through a pacifistic lens. Importantly, Costello appears to value pacifism more than valour and patriotism at a time when the latter qualities were widely idealised. Her portrayal of Napoleon, a national enemy for Britain, for instance, is one example of how she approaches characterisation humanely rather than politically, displaying what the author titled a “cosmopolitan imagination” and a “compassionate intellect”, an interesting contrast from other historical and contemporary examples of politically-charged literature.