Poetry and Chemistry, 1770-1830: Mingling Exploded Systems
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POETRY AND CHEMISTRY, 1770-1830: MINGLING EXPLODED SYSTEMS by KURTIS HESSEL B.S.C. University of Miami, 2005 M.A. Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2008 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English 2017 ii This thesis entitled: Poetry and Chemistry, 1770-1830: Mingling Exploded Systems written by Kurtis Hessel has been approved for the Department of English _________________________________________ (Jill Heydt-Stevenson) _________________________________________ (Jeffrey Cox) Date_____________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii ABSTRACT Hessel, Kurtis (Ph.D., English) Poetry and Chemistry, 1770-1830: Mingling Exploded Systems Dissertation directed by Associate Professor Jill Heydt-Stevenson Poetry and Chemistry, 1770-1830: Mingling Exploded Systems argues that changes in how scientists understood and practiced chemistry influenced how literary writers defined their field. These changes also contributed to a profound transformation occurring between 1770 and 1830: the separation of the arts and sciences into disciplines. I examine the establishment of chemistry as a branch of physical science, the relationship between poetic criticism and scientific theory, and the growing estrangement during the period among humanistic, aesthetic and scientific pursuits. Authors including Anna Barbauld, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Humphry Davy responded to the specialization of knowledge ambivalently, embracing the capacity of new methods of order to intensify intellectual scrutiny, but resisting the tendency of disciplines to produce epistemological stability. My project highlights how the period’s writers of imaginative literature found chemistry entrancing. For example, I draw attention to Anna Barbauld’s eager depictions of Joseph Priestley’s laboratory and experiments, and feature Humphry Davy’s multifaceted generic and disciplinary fusions in his Consolations in Travel. In particular, I explore how the concept of the chemical element changed during the period, and how it changed literature: Antoine Lavoisier, in collaboration with other French chemists and following the work of an international scientific community, rejected the idea of four basic elements that the sciences had received from antiquity. Literary authors variously adopted and adapted his new concept to give order to their pursuits, and its prominence inflected their ideas about aesthetic wholeness and poetic fragmentation. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Years have passed away since we first met; & your presence & recollections with regard to you have afforded me continual sources of enjoyment. Some of the better feelings of my nature have been elevated by your converse; & thoughts which you have nursed have been to me an eternal source of consolation. (Humphry Davy, Letter to Coleridge, 25 March 1804) I have been fortunate to find a community of friends during the writing of this dissertation who have guided my development as a scholar, but more importantly who have cared for me in moments of adversity, and who have helped me become the person who I am today. I say “friends” rather than the more drily institutional “peers” because these relationships combine rigorous intellectual exchange with a mutual regard for personal care and emotional support. My experience has taught me that as scholars we are at our best, not when we withdraw into academic isolation, but as we cultivate and honor our communities. With that in mind, I want to take stock of the many people who have helped me to this achievement. I am grateful for a wide group of friends who have nurtured my intellectual and personal growth. I wish to thank the members of the Colorado Romantics Collective, past and present, for their support: Conny Cassity, Kelli Towers Jasper, Dan Larson, John Leffel, Grace Rexroth, Terry F. Robinson, Rebecca Schneider, Jason Shafer, John Stevenson, Dana Van Kooy, and Nicole Wright. I’m likewise grateful to other compatriots at the University of Colorado, who have filled my life with joy, offering guidance and enlightening conversation: Jessica Bornstein, John Crossley, Lacy Cunningham, Andrew Daigle, Katherine Eggert, Lori Emerson, David Glimp, Chris Haynes, Janice Ho, Jarad Krywicki, Steve Lamos, Christie-Anne Leopold, Dan v Leopold, Melanie Lo, Quentin McAndrew, Allison Shelton, and Sue Zemka. I would not be on this journey were it not for my excellent mentors at the University of Miami and Southern Illinois University, Thomas Goodmann, Scott McEathron, and Ryan Netzley. Likewise, I am indebted to friends across the country, including Mariana Alarcón, Jake Clayton, Neşe Devenot, Allison Dushane, Kelly Grant, Julian Knöx, Devoney Looser, Mark Lussier, Ashwin Ravikumar, Brian Rejack, Jared Richman, Angie Rovak, Patsy Sibley, Emily Stanback, Mike Theune, and Alan Vardy, who have enriched my thinking and my life, and whom I cannot see nearly as often as I would like. I want to offer special thanks to those who have contributed directly to this dissertation by reading drafts and offering suggestions for revision and refinement. Writing is a difficult task, and I cherish the trust and intimacy that collaborative revision fosters. Thora Brylowe, Jessica Evans-Wall, Michael Gamer, Jon Klancher, Jacob Leveton, Deven Parker, and Michele Speitz have all offered thoughtful commentary on parts of this dissertation, for which I am deeply grateful. I thank them also for their friendship. I am indebted to the anonymous readers who reviewed article versions of chapters two and four that appear in Configurations and Studies in Romanticism. I would also like to thank the members of my committee, Jeffrey Cox, Tim Fulford, Helmut Müller-Sievers, and Paul Youngquist, for helping me mold this dissertation into its current form and offering me a glimpse of the shape it might take in the future. Finally, I want to thank Alex Corey and Kirstyn Leuner, who have seen me through bad sentences and other such dire travails, and who are quick to join a spontaneous dance party when the occasion arises. I owe to them more than I can calculate. I have been sustained by other friends and family who have helped me to grow as a person and provided me comfort and fellowship. Thank you, Kyle Alvarez, Lyndsay Friedman, vi Rachel Hawley, Amy Lanham, Jason McDonald, Krystal Mottice, Adam Shazar, and Jean Malone Ward for your friendship. Special thanks to Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, whose sage advice propelled me up Helvellyn in the midst of a storm, and who has taught me much about finding poetry in the world. Thanks go to my family for their support: Deedee, Papa, Uncle Kurt and Aunt Gail, Aunt Julie and Uncle Doug, Dooda, Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bill, Aunt Mary, Aunt Robin, the Pallisers, and the Joneses. Aunt Jenna, I’m certain your stories helped to set me on this path. Mom, Dad, Jeremy, Amanda, and Liam, from you I have learned to care for others, to pursue what is right, to embrace good humor, to act with resolute modesty, and always to reflect on my place in the world. In this, in times past, you gave me poetry before I had ever read a line. To my dear Justine, thank you for giving me back a vision of the bright future. Your kindness and brilliance inspire me, and I am happy to be with you. I look forward to what we will discover together in the years ahead. Finally, I want to thank Jill Heydt-Stevenson, to whom I dedicate this dissertation, for everything that she has done for me and for many of the people listed above. In the years that I have known you, you have taught me to write, inspired me to be a better teacher, and enabled me to read literature with new eyes. You have been the guide on my academic journey: with your help, I’ve travelled across landscapes real and imaginary. Your kindness and patience have aided me in difficult times, and your keen intellect and incisive editing have pushed me to question my assumptions, so that I could become a more careful and ingenious thinker. You are a singular mentor and a dear friend, and I eagerly anticipate a lifetime of collaboration, conversation, and camaraderie. vii Contents Introduction: 1 Mingling “Exploded Systems” Chapter One: “Born of the Air and Doomed to Flame”: Barbauld, Priestley, and the Revolution 31 in Knowledge Chapter Two: 94 The Romantic-Era Lecture: Dividing and Reuniting the Arts and Sciences Chapter Three: 130 Knowledge’s “gordian shape”: Keats and the Disciplines Chapter Four: 160 Humphry Davy’s Intergalactic Travel: Catching Sight of Another Genre Coda: 216 The Danger after Disciplines Works Cited 227 1 Introduction Mingling “Exploded Systems” And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas. -Victor Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, Hindle 42) Victor Frankenstein mistrusted the growing order of Romantic-era intellectual life, and for that reason, the implicit warning about the danger of knowledge in his tragic story remains poignant nearly two centuries later. Our own sciences, and our arts as well, began to develop their contemporary contours during the nineteenth century, beginning their long journey towards relative stability in the modern university. Sciences like chemistry and biology gained new nomenclatures, dedicated professional societies, consistent funding mechanisms, and other conventional disciplinary practices. Victor’s ambitions are famously grander than those of his narrative contemporaries, who tout their modern scientific views and denigrate his alchemical enthusiasm. He expresses dissatisfaction with the small practical aims of scientists: “I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth” (Mary Shelley, Hindle 48).