Romanticism and Philosophy This volume brings together a wide range of scholars to offer new perspec­ tives on the relationship between Romanticism and philosophy. The entan­ glement of Romantic literature with philosophy is increasingly recognized, just as Romanticism is increasingly viewed as European and Transatlantic, yet few studies combine these coordinates and consider the philosophical significance of distinctly literary questions in British and American Romantic writings. The essays in this book are concerned with literary writing as a form of thinking, investigating the many ways in which Romantic literature across the Atlantic engages with European thought, from eighteenth­ and nineteenth­century philosophy to contemporary theory. The contributors read Romantic texts both as critical responses to the major debates that have shaped the history of philosophy, and as thought experiments in their own right. This volume thus examines anew the poetic philosophy of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley, and Clare, also extending beyond poetry to consider other literary genres as philosophically significant, such as Jane Austen’s novels, De Quincey’s autofiction, Edgar Allan Poe’s tales, and Emerson’s essays. Grounded in complementary theoretical backgrounds and reading practices, the various contributions draw on an impressive array of writers and thinkers and challenge our understanding not only of Romanticism, but also of what we have come to think of as “literature” and “philosophy.” Sophie Laniel-Musitelli is Associate Professor at the Université de Lille, France. Thomas Constantinesco is Associate Professor at the Université Paris Diderot, France, and a Junior Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). Routledge Studies in Romanticism 1 Keats’s Boyish Imagination 9 Thomas De Quincey Richard Marggraf Turley New Theoretical and Critical Directions 2 Leigh Hunt Edited by Robert Morrison and Life, Poetics, Politics Daniel S. Roberts Edited by Nicholas Roe 10 Romanticism and Visuality 3 Leigh Hunt and the London Fragments, History, Spectacle Literary Scene Sophie Thomas A Reception History of his Major Works, 1805–1828 11 Romanticism, History, Michael Eberle-Sinatra Historicism Essays on an Orthodoxy 4 Tracing Women’s Romanticism Edited by Damian Walford Gender, History and Davies Transcendence Kari E. Lokke 12 The Meaning of “Life” in Romantic Poetry and Poetics 5 Metaphysical Hazlitt Edited by Ross Wilson Bicentenary Essays Uttara Natarajan, Tom Paulin 13 German Romanticism and and Duncan Wu Science The Procreative Poetics of 6 Romantic Genius and the Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter Literary Magazine Jocelyn Holland Biography, Celebrity, Politics David Higgins 14 Colonialism, Race, and the French Romantic Imagination 7 Romantic Representations of Pratima Prasad British India Edited by Michael J. Franklin 15 Keats and Philosophy The Life of Sensations 8 Sympathy and the State in the Shahidha K. Bari Romantic Era Systems, State Finance, and the 16 Animality in British Romanticism Shadows of Futurity The Aesthetics of Species Robert Mitchell Peter Heymans 17 Legacies of Romanticism 20 Romantic Education in Literature, Culture, Aesthetics Nineteenth-Century American Edited by Carmen Casaliggi Literature and Paul March-Russell National and Transatlantic Contexts 18 The Female Romantics Edited by Monika M. Elbert Nineteenth­century Women and Lesley Ginsberg Novelists and Byronism Caroline Franklin 21 Romanticism and Philosophy Thinking with Literature 19 Bodily Pain in Romantic Edited by Sophie Laniel- Literature Musitelli and Thomas Jeremy Davies Constantinesco This page intentionally left blank Romanticism and Philosophy Thinking with Literature Edited by Sophie Laniel-Musitelli and Thomas Constantinesco First published 2015 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Romanticism and philosophy : thinking with literature / edited by Sophie Laniel­Musitelli and Thomas Constantinesco. pages cm. — (Routledge studies in romanticism ; #21) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Romanticism. 2. Literature—Philosophy. I. Laniel­Musitelli, Sophie, editor. II. Constantinesco, Thomas, editor. PN603.R568 2015 809'.9145—dc23 2015000730 ISBN: 978­1­138­80550­7 (hbk) ISBN: 978­1­315­75237­2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Thinking with Literature 1 SOPHIE LANIEL­MUSITELLI AND THOMAS Constantinesco Part I Romantic Confrontations 1 Absolut Jena: A Second Look at Lacoue­Labarthe’s and Nancy’s Representation of the Literary Theory of Frühromantik 19 Christoph BODE 2 History and Poetry: Fundamental Aspects and Effects of the Relations between Literature and Philosophy in English Romanticism 40 ERIC Dayre 3 “Ghostly Language”: Spectral Presences and Subjectivity in Wordsworth’s Salisbury Plain Poems 60 MARK Sandy 4 Thinking without Being and Acts of Poetry in Shelley 74 ARKady PlotnitsKY Part II The Poetics of Thought 5 Prolegomenon to the Remnants: Shelley’s “Triumph of Life” 97 SIMON JARVIS 6 Wordsworth’s Thinking Places 117 Pascale Guibert viii Contents 7 Philosophy, Politics, Sensation: The Case of John Clare 131 YVES ABRIOUX Part III Romantic Selves 8 Philosophies of Identity and Impersonation from Locke to Charles Mathews 147 ANGELA ESTERHAMMER 9 The Happiness of Romantic Philosophy 166 JOEL FAFLAK 10 Subjectivity and Despair in Blake and Kierkegaard 179 Laura QUINNEY 11 Thomas De Quincey and Søren Kierkegaard: The Elective Affinities between Romantic Philosophical Autobiography and Autobiographical Philosophy 194 FRANÇOISE Dupeyron-Lafay Part IV Transatlantic Romanticism 12 The Tension between Immanence and Dualism in Coleridge and Emerson 209 DANIELLE FOLLETT 13 Emerson’s Philosophy of Creativity 222 Susan L. Dunston 14 The Perversity of Skepticism: Qualia and Criteria in Emerson and Poe 233 Paul Grimstad Coda: Cavell and Wordsworth: Illuminating Romanticism 245 Edward T. DUFFY List of Contributors 255 Index 259 Acknowledgments This book originates in an international conference on “Romanticism and Philosophy” held in Lille in September 2012 and organized jointly by the French Society for the Study of British Romanticism (SERA) and the Universities of Paris Diderot and Lille. Our warm thanks go to the SERA, who set this project in motion and to the scientific committee of the Romanticism and Philosophy conference: Mathieu Duplay, Thomas Dutoit, Jean­Marie Fournier, and Marc Porée for their guidance. We are grateful to our institutions, the University of Lille and the University of Paris Diderot, and in particular to our research centers Cécille and LARCA, who supported this project from the start. We are particularly thankful to Camille Masse and to Jean­François Delcroix (University of Lille) for their invaluable help throughout the project and to Elizabeth Levine, Andrew Weckenmann, and Joshua Wells at Routledge for welcoming this project and granting us their trust and support. We are also grateful to Cheryl Lester and Philip Barnard for kindly granting us permission to quote from their translation of L’absolu littéraire, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism (1988). We would also like to thank Jens Martin Gurr and Berit Michel for permission to reprint parts of Angela Esterhammer’s chapter, a shorter version of which first appeared as “Impersonation in Late­Romantic Urban Performance and Print Culture” in Romantic Cityscapes (2013); the Pennsylvania State University Press for permission to reprint selections of Susan Dunston’s “In the ‘Light out of the East’: Emerson on Self, Subjectivity, and Creativity” (Journal of Speculative Philosophy 26.1 [2012]: 25–45); and Bloomsbury Publishing for permission to reprint portions of Edward T. Duffy’s Secular Mysteries: Stanley Cavell and English Romanticism (2013). Finally, we would like to express our sincerest thanks and gratitude to our contributors for committing their considerable talent, energy and enthusiasm to this project. This page intentionally left blank Introduction Thinking with Literature Sophie Laniel-Musitelli and Thomas Constantinesco yet a speechless child, Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain Her lidless eyes for thee; Percy B. Shelley, “Ode to Liberty” (58–60) Tell all the truth but tell it slant— Success in Circuit lies Emily Dickinson (F1263, 1–2) OvertURE Shelley’s lines celebrate the alliance of literature and philosophy, as liberty emerges from creative freedom and critical awareness. Yet, the form of the poem tells us more, through figures, sonorities, and connotations. A chiasmus promises speech to poetry and confers vision