Abstract

This volume brings toge­ther a wide range of scho­lars to offer new pers­pec­ti­ves on the rela­tion­ship bet­ween Romanticism and phi­lo­so­phy. The entan­gle­ment of Romantic lite­ra­ture with phi­lo­so­phy is increa­sin­gly reco­gni­zed, just as Romanticism is increa­sin­gly viewed as European and Transatlantic, yet few stu­dies com­bine these coor­di­na­tes and consi­der the phi­lo­so­phi­cal signi­fi­cance of dis­tinctly lite­rary ques­tions in British and American Romantic wri­tings. The essays in this book are concer­ned with lite­rary wri­ting as a form of thin­king, inves­ti­ga­ting the many ways in which Romantic lite­ra­ture across the Atlantic enga­ges with European thought, from 18th- and 19th-cen­tury phi­lo­so­phy to contem­po­rary theory. The contri­bu­tors read Romantic texts both as cri­ti­cal res­pon­ses to the major deba­tes that have shaped the his­tory of phi­lo­so­phy, and as thought expe­ri­ments in their own right. This volume thus exa­mi­nes anew the poetic phi­lo­so­phy of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley, Keats, and Clare, also exten­ding beyond poetry to consi­der other lite­rary genres as phi­lo­so­phi­cally signi­fi­cant, such as Jane Austen’s novels, De Quincey’s auto­fic­tion, Edgar Allan Poe’s tales, or Emerson’s essays. Grounded in com­ple­men­tary theo­re­ti­cal back­grounds and rea­ding prac­ti­ces, the various contri­bu­tions draw on an impres­sive array of wri­ters and thin­kers and chal­lenge our unders­tan­ding not only of Romanticism, but also of what we have come to think of as "lite­ra­ture" and "phi­lo­so­phy."