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, and Clare, also extending beyond poetry to consider other literary genres as philosophically significant, such as Jane Austens novels, De Quinceys autofiction, Edgar Allan Poes tales, or Emersons 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."
Introduction: Thinking with Literature Sophie Laniel-Musitelli and
Thomas Constantinesco Part I: Romantic Confrontations
1. Absolut Jena: A
Second Look at Lacoue-Labarthes and Nancys Representation of the Literary
Theory of Frühromantik Christoph Bode
2. History and Poetry: Fundamental
Aspects and Affects of the Relations between Literature and Philosophy in
English Romanticism Eric Dayre
3. "Ghostly Language": Spectral Presences and
Subjectivity in Wordsworths Salisbury Plain Poems Mark Sandy
4. Thinking
without Being and Acts of Poetry in Shelley Arkady Plotnitsky Part II: The
Poetics of Thought
5. Prolegomenon to the Remnants: Shelleys "Triumph of
Life" Simon Jarvis
6. Wordsworths Thinking Places Pascale Guibert
7.
Philosophy, Politics, Sensation: The Case of John Clare Yves Abrioux Part
III: Romantic Selves
8. Philosophies of Identity and Impersonation from Locke
to Charles Mathews Angela Esterhammer
9. The Happiness of Romantic Philosophy
Joel Faflak
10. Subjectivity and Despair in Blake and Kierkegaard Laura
Quinney
11. Thomas De Quincey and Sųren Kierkegaard: The Elective Affinities
between Romantic Philosophical Autobiography and Autobiographical Philosophy
Franēoise Dupeyron-Lafay Part IV: Transatlantic Romanticism
12. The Tension
between Immanence and Dualism in Coleridge and Emerson Danielle Follett
13.
Emersons Philosophy of Creativity Susan L. Dunston
14. The Perversity of
Skepticism: Qualia and Criteria in Emerson and Poe Paul Grimstad Coda: Cavell
and Wordsworth: Illuminating Romanticism Edward T. Duffy
Sophie Laniel-Musitelli is Associate Professor at the Université de Lille, France.
Thomas Constantinesco is Associate Professor at the Université Paris Diderot, France and a Junior Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF).
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