Disastrous subjectivities : romanticism, modernity, and the real / David Collings.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Collings, David, 1959- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Romanticism.

Civilization, Modern.

Subjectivity.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

ix, 235 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : University of Toronto Press, [2019]

Summary:

"Disastrous Subjectivities argues that modernity cancels the notion of an external limit for history, a transcendental origin or end, and in consequence produces an open field haunted by its boundlessness. Because that limitless state is not anchored in any beginning or destination, it can disrupt history at any moment and indeed cannot be separated from history's ordinary functioning; it thus becomes a part of history itself, its internal excess. In readings of Immanuel Kant, Mary Wollstonecraft, Willian Godwin, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, this book explores how this internal excess takes the form of an infinitely demanding ethics and a traumatic sublime, both of which becomes most visible in the subject's encounters with a geological history marked by endless disaster. Rather than producing a grounded, secular subject, modernity's initial gesture brings about an array of disastrous subjectivities, each haunted by its radically vulnerable, nonsecular condition."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Catastrophic Benevolence, Ruinous Immortality: Wollstonecraft's Shipwreck

Prohibiting the Impossible: Godwin and the Formation of the Real

After the Covenant: Undead Subjectivity in Wordsworth's Alpine Sublime

Trusting to the Billows: Byron's Poetics of the Real

Tarrying with Disaster: Ethical Destitution in Shelley's The Triumph of Life.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781487506148

1487506147

OCLC:

1108827976