Romantic Poetry and the Fragmentary Imperative : Schlegel, Byron, Joyce, Blanchot

Romantic Poetry and the Fragmentary Imperative locates Byron (and, to a lesser extent, Joyce) within a genealogy of romantic poetry understood not so much as imaginative selfexpression or ideological case study but rather as what the German romantics call romantische poesiean experimental form of poetry loosely based on the fragmentary flexibility and acute critical selfconsciousness of Socratic dialogue. The book is therefore less an attempt to present yet another theory of romanticism than it is an effort to recover a more precise sense of the relationship between Byron's fragmentary or workless poetic and romantic poetry generally, and to articulate connections between romantic poetry and modern literature and literary theory. The book also argues that the exigency or imperative of the fragmentary works of Schlegel, Byron, Joyce, and Blanchot is not so much the expression of a style as it is an acknowledgment of what remains unthought in thinking. Author Biography: Christopher A. Strathman is Assistant Professor of English at Baylor University. Romantic Poetryand theFragmentary Imperative: Schlegel, Byron, Joyce, Blanchot......Page 4 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 12 1. Setting Out: Toward Irony, the Fragment, and the Fragmentary Work......Page 14 2. Rethinking Romantic Poetry: Schlegel, the Genre of Dialogue, and the Poetics of the Fragment......Page 41 3. Nothing so Difficult as a Beginning: Byron’s Pilgrimage to the Origin of the Work of Art and the Inspiration of Exile......Page 70 4. Narrative and Its Discontents; or,TheNovel as Fragmentary Work: Joyce at the Limits of Romantic Poetry......Page 118 5. From the Fragmentary Work to the Fragmentary Imperative: Blanchot and the Quest for Passage to the Outside......Page 164 1. Setting Out: Toward Irony, the Fragment, and the Fragmentary Work......Page 190 2.Rethinking Romantic Poetry: Schlegel, the Genre of Dialogue, and the Poetics of the Fragment......Page 198 3.Nothing so Difficult as a Beginning: Byron’s Pilgrimage to the Origin of the Work of Art and the Inspiration of Exile......Page 202 4.Narrative and Its Discontents; or, The Novel as Fragmentary Work: Joyce at the Limits of Romantic Poetry......Page 207 5. From the Fragmentary Work to the FragmentaryImperative: Blanchot and the Quest for Passage to the Outside......Page 210 C......Page 214 K......Page 215 T......Page 216 Z......Page 217 "Romantic Poetry and the Fragmentary Imperative locates Byron (and, to a lesser extent, Joyce) within a genealogy of romantic poetry understood not so much as imaginative self-expression or ideological case study but rather as what the German romantics call "romantische poesie"--An experimental form of poetry loosely based on the fragmentary flexibility and acute critical self-consciousness of Socratic dialogue. The book is therefore less an attempt to present yet another theory of romanticism than it is an effort to recover a more precise sense of the relationship between Byron's fragmentary or "workless" poetic and romantic poetry generally, and to articulate connections between romantic poetry and modern literature and literary theory. The book also argues that the "exigency" or "imperative" of the fragmentary works of Schlegel, Byron, Joyce, and Blanchor is not so much the expression of a style as it is an acknowledgment of what remains unthought in thinking."--Jacket Uses the concept of the poetic fragment to draw connections between romantic poetry and modern literature and literary theory.