Romantic Dynamics: The Poetics of Physicality (Romanticism in Perspective:Texts, Cultures, Histories)

Romantic Dynamics creatively collides English poetry with a wide range of exotic concepts associated with the 'new physics' of relativity and quantum to uncover their shared concerns for indeterminacy, uncertainty, relativity, and complexity in a chaotic universe. This interdisciplinary work traces the elaboration of dynamical models of cosmos and consciousness in works by Blake, Byron, Coleridge, the Shelleys and Wordsworth, finding in those works an exploration of the interpenetration of psyche and phenomena. This model, the author argues, establishes a new metaphoric terrain liberated from the classical mechanics of Newtonian thought and more easily traversed with models articulated by Bohr, Einstein and Hawking. Romantic Dynamics : the Poetics of Physicality creatively collides English Romantic poetry with a wide range of concepts from contemporary theoretical physics in an attempt to track shared assumptions in their models of material and mental dynamics. The work calls into question the perceived tension between Romantic poetics and physical theory and links such perceptions to recent backlashes against various modes of postmodern criticism. Romantic Dynamics uncovers considerable confluence between the physical models of mind and matter constructed within Romantic poetry and those articulated by contemporary physical theory, from cosmology to neuroscience. This interdisciplinary work traces the elaboration of dynamical models of cosmos and consciousness in works by Blake, Byron, Coleridge, the Shelleys and Wordsworth, finding in those works an exploration of the interpenetration of psyche and phenomena. This model, the author argues, establishes a new metaphoric terrain liberated from the classical mechanics of Newtonian thought and more easily traversed with models articulated by Bohr, Einstein and Hawking Although many books have studied writers and alcohol in modern American literature, the rich culture of drinking and the many poems and narratives about it in the Romantic period in England have been entirely neglected. Bacchus in Romantic England: Writers and Drink 1780-1830 is the first study to describe the bulk and variety of writings about drinking to set these poems, novels, essays, letters and journals in a historical, sociological, and medical context to demonstrate the importance of drunkenness in the works of a number of major and minor writers of the period and to suggest that during these years, for a short time, the pleasures and pains of drinking are held in a vivacious balance. The book argues that the figure of the drinker tests the margins of the human being, either as a beast, savage, or thing or, on the other edge of the human range, as a free, inspired spirit "This book focuses on some of the greatest writers and artists of European Romanticism, including S. T. Coleridge, Wordsworth, J. M. W. Turner, Goethe, Holderlin and, in the later nineteenth century, Matthew Arnold. Concluding with a discussion of the significance of Romanticism for our understanding of postmodernity, its various chapters explore the place of the biblical canon as the central element in the shift from the sacred to the secular, and the place of the Bible in the development of our concept of Weltliteratur, or world literature, as definitive of culture. This book will be of interest to all concerned with art, literature and the development of biblical criticism and religious thought."--BOOK JACKET "Romantic Dynamics: the Poetics of Physicality creatively collides English Romantic poetry with a wide range of concepts from contemporary theoretical physics in an attempt to track shared assumptions in their models of material and mental dynamics. The work calls into question the perceived tension between Romantic poetics and physical theory and links such perceptions to recent backlashes against various modes of postmodern criticism. This interdisciplinary work traces the elaboration of dynamical models of cosmos and consciousness in works by Blake, Byron, Coleridge, the Shelleys and Wordsworth, finding in those works an exploration of the interpenetration of psyche and phenomena."--BOOK JACKET. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Preludium: On Synchronicity....Pages 1-12 Romantic Dynamics, or Towards a Physical Criticism....Pages 13-46 Blake’s Deep Ecology, or the Ethos of Otherness....Pages 47-63 At the Limit of Physical Theory, or Quantum Dynamics in Coleridge’s Rime....Pages 64-81 Blake’s Vortex, or The Quantum Bridge in Milton....Pages 82-104 Reconstructing Byronic Time, or Temporality and Memory in The Giaour....Pages 105-135 The Rhythmic Universe, or Spatial Dynamics in Shelley’s Poetics....Pages 136-164 Methodic Sadism/Symbolic Misogyny: Romantic Responses to Science as Ideology....Pages 165-181 Back Matter....Pages 182-220 Machine generated contents note: Preludium: On Synchronicity 1 Romantic Dynamics, or Towards a Physical Criticism 2 Blake's Deep Ecology, or the Ethos of Otherness 3 At the Limit of Physical Theory, or Physical Dynamics in Coleridge's Rime 4 Blake's Vortex, or the Quantum Bridge in Milton 5 Reconstructing Byronic Time, or Temporality and Memory in The Giaour 6 The Rhythmic Universe, or Spatial Dynamics in Shelley's Poetics 7 Methodic Sadism/Symbolic Misogyny: Romantic Responses to Sciences as Ideology. Lussier (English, Arizona State U.) calls into question the assumed tension between Romantic poetry and physical theory, arguing that the Romantics did in fact use and depend upon contemporary physical theory, including cosmology and neuroscience. He explores the work of several poets, covering topics such as Blake's "Deep Ecology", the physical dynamics of Coleridge's Rime, and temporality and memory in Byron's The Giaour.