SOURCE: “Nationalist Texts and Counter-Texts: Southey's Roderick and the Dissensions of the Annotated Romance,” in Nineteenth Century Literature, Vol. 53, No. 4, March, 1999, pp. 421-51.

In the following essay, Saglia compares the text of Southey's last epic poem Roderick, the Last of the Goths with actual historical events, and discusses how the poem reflects Southey's interest in cultural and national identity.

On 18 July 1811 the radical poet, thinker, and reformer John Thelwall invited Robert Southey and Henry Crabb Robinson to dine at his home. Robinson had recently returned from Spain, where he had been sent as a reporter for the Times, while Southey was a staunch supporter of the Peninsular campaigns and one of the major British experts on Iberian culture. Thus conversation at Thelwall's table soon centered on the war that the British army had been fighting for over three years against the Grande Armée on the Peninsula.¹ Even...