Romanticism and the human sciences : poetry, population, and the discourse of the species / Maureen N. McLane.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McLane, Maureen N., author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 41.

Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 41

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

Literature and anthropology--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and anthropology.

Social sciences--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Social sciences.

Social problems in literature.

Romanticism--Great Britain.

Romanticism.

Population in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 282 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Romanticism & the Human Sciences

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This study, published in 2000, examines the dialogue between Romantic poetry and the human sciences of the period. Maureen McLane reveals how Romantic writers participated in a new-found consciousness of human beings as a species, by analysing their work in relation to discourses on moral philosophy, political economy and anthropology. Writers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley explored the possibilities and limits of human being, language and hope. They engaged with the work of theorisers of the human sciences - Malthus, Godwin and Burke among them. The book offers original readings of canonical works, including Lyrical Ballads, Frankenstein and Prometheus Unbound, to show how the Romantics internalised and transformed ideas about the imagination, perfectibility, immortality and population which so energised contemporary moral and political debates. McLane provides a defence of poetry in both Romantic and contemporary theoretical terms, reformulating the predicament of Romanticism in general and poetry in particular.

Contents:

1. Toward an anthropologic: poetry, literature, and the discourse of the species

2. Do rustics think?: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the problem of a "human diction"

3. Literate species: populations, "humanities," and the specific failure of literature in Frankenstein

4. "Arithmetic of futurity": poetry, population, and the structure of the future

5. Dead poets and other romantic populations: immortality and its discontents

Epilogue, or Immortality interminable: the use of poetry for life.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 268-275) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-11990-1

0-511-31050-1

0-511-15114-4

1-280-15473-X

0-511-04994-3

0-511-48439-9

0-521-77348-2

0-511-11851-1

OCLC:

475870763