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Romantic Poetologies: Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity in Early Anglo-German Romanticism

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Romantic Poetologies: Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity in Early Anglo-German Romanticism Romantic Poetologies: Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity in early Anglo-German Romanticism Ammara Ashraf A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Department of English, School of English and Drama Queen Mary, University of London 1 Abstract This thesis reads seminal texts such as Wordsworth’s prose, Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude, and The Excursion alongside Coleridge’s poetic theory and practice and Novalis, Tieck and Friedrich Schlegel’s philosophical novels and fragments, as ‘poetologies’. My initial research aim is to test how successfully Wordsworth can be read as part of this Anglo-German comparative framework, from which criticism has tended to exclude him. This is done through demonstrating the centrality of irony and drama to the philosophical character of Wordsworth’s poetry. Drawing on the theory of the Frühromantiker, I demonstrate that Wordsworth’s revisionary habit and his use of ballads and epitaphs shape a poetics constantly ‘in the process of becoming’ (F. Schlegel), the vehicle of the poet’s aspirations to dramatize a potentially infinite self-consciousness. Secondly, my thesis investigates the ways of reading these seminal texts which give us a clearer idea of how Romantic writers internally situate their own work through their use of contrasting genres. This investigation expands to examine how the collaborative, interdisciplinary ventures proposed by Romantic writers elaborate the concept of ‘poetology’ as a practicable theory. This leads to my final research aim: to make apparent that these methodologies result in the Mischgedicht, the ‘mixed poem’ which Schlegel theorizes as the ultimate incarnation of modern, ‘Romantic’ literature. The thesis concludes by drawing theories, methodologies and texts together and making sense of that ultimate continuity sought by the Romantic project. I do this by turning to the poetologizing of immortality (which supersedes death as a Romantic preoccupation) and arguing that to poetologize immortality – to poeticize and philosophize it simultaneously – is the test-case for producing the infinite from the finite. I suggest the necessity felt by Romantic writers to achieve this transformation in order to legitimate the permeable philosophical poetry and poetic philosophy – ‘poetologies’ – which made it possible. 2 Contents Acknowledgements 4 Dedication 5 Chapter 1. ‘What is a Poet?’: a poetological approach 6 Chapter 2. ‘in fairy tales and poetry / One sees the world’s true histories’: Sympoesie – Symphilosophie 42 Chapter 3. ‘It is no tale; but should you think, / Perhaps a tale you’ll make it’: Wordsworth as Romantic ironist in Lyrical Ballads (1798 & 1800), Peter Bell and Benjamin the Waggoner 91 Chapter 4. ‘Irony is permanent parabasis’: ‘Wordsworth’s’ dramatic voice in The Prelude(s), 1805 & 1850 136 Chapter 5. ‘… as in a sort of interregnum’: Mediation and the Mischgedicht in Romantic poetry 181 Chapter 6. ‘The world must be romanticized’: writing immortality as infinity 224 Bibliography 259 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank, firstly, the Department of English at Queen Mary for continued support and for a Research and Teaching Studentship (2009-11), which made it possible for me to complete this project. This thesis has been supervised by Professor Paul Hamilton, whose support and infinite patience I am deeply indebted to. Paul has consistently provided inspiration and encouragement for thinking about German Romanticism, and has been endlessly generous with his time and advice. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with him and to learn from him over the years. I would like to thank Anne Janowitz for inspiring in me a love of Wordsworth and for reading and offering suggestions for parts of Chapters 4, 5, and 6. Annie’s lectures first stimulated my thoughts on Romanticism years ago and her conversations since have helped shape my readings of poetry. Markman Ellis also kindly read Chapter 4 in its early stages and provided very helpful comments on the spectacles of 1790s London. Many thanks to Howard Caygill at Goldsmiths and Paul Hamilton for making possible my participation in German classes at Goldsmiths. These were tutored by Nick Walker, from whom I have learnt so much about German philosophy and poetry. Nick’s generosity and enthusiasm for all things German have enhanced my confidence and pleasure in reading German and stimulated my thoughts on genres, the Nachtseite and German lyric poetry. I have benefited greatly from the thriving – sympoetological – intellectual life at Queen Mary; several colleagues and friends have shaped my thinking, perhaps more than they know. Beyond Queen Mary, I am deeply indebted to the good friends past and present who have encouraged me. In particular, I would like to thank Zara Majeed, whose friendship and conversation are always full of support, Jaimee McRoberts, who has never been short of coffee, conversation, and humorous anecdotes at the British Library, Umrah Roshan, whose faith and wisdom I do not acknowledge enough, and Amy Tallantire, who has suffered many a conversation on Wordsworth and irony for my sake. Amy has read the thesis through several drafts and has always provided helpful suggestions. The Tallantires have kindly opened up their homes to me on many occasions when I have needed a retreat to think and write – I am grateful for their warmth and hospitality. Finally, I have been fortunate to have had several inspirational teachers, the first and best of whom remains my sister, Uzma Ashraf. I am also grateful to the English teachers I have had, especially those who were so confident I would learn to love Wordsworth. They were, as teachers often are, right. 4 For my parents, Mohammad and Perveen Ashraf, whose sacrifices and unwavering support keep me going. And for my niece, Zahra Hassan, whose daily dramatizing keeps us all going. 5 Chapter 1. ‘What is a Poet?’: a poetological approach Irony This thesis seeks to address some of the most pressing questions early Romantic writers and thinkers find themselves asking. In one version of his famous ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth asks, ‘What is a Poet?’ An apparently simple enough question and furnished with an equally simple answer – ‘a Man speaking to men’ – the implications of this inquiry are actually far more complex, and I shall begin to work through these as my argument progresses. To begin with, however, I hope my graduation from considering what a Romantic poet is to defining the concept of poetology might be justified as both a technical necessity as well as a structural one: the drive behind my argument is that we cannot hope to have as rich an understanding of the methods employed by Wordsworth and other leading Romantic thinker-writers if we do not recognize the nature of the relationship between – if not always unity of – poetic theory, methodology and practice. The word ‘poetology’ is not a term that always refers to study of the Romantic period. It is one that has been picked up in German criticism to refer to a type of literature which explores methods of arriving at knowledge. It has gained currency through the work of Joseph Vogl, whose phrase, ‘poetologies of knowledge’ has come to indicate the ways in which diverse disciplines such as poetry and science contribute towards new methods of knowledge. With this emphasis on reflexivity, it is unsurprising that it has become a term in usage when considering modern cultural and social scientific discourses of knowledge. What is more surprising, perhaps, is that in the United States and in contemporary British performance poetry it has also come to mean the study and practice of spoken poetic expression by some. My first encounter with the term was through ‘Anglo-German Poetologies Around 1800’, an invigorating research colloquium hosted by the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary, University of London (2007-9). This seminar series was concerned with the study of early Romantic intersection of poetic and philosophical theory (particularly theories of life and the self), and much of the material presented and discussed in and beyond this space 6 provided a stimulus for my own consideration of issues explored in this thesis.1 Poetology, then, is clearly a term that is flexible in its definition. In using it to consider the nature and interrelation of seminal early Romantic texts in England and Germany, I am arguing that such flexibility should be upheld when considering literary and philosophical theories and modes of texts production that are as diverse and collaborative as those of early Romantics. Poetology is a word that is suited to comparative studies – particularly those seeking to address how literature engenders modes of knowledge – because it seeks to bridge gaps between ‘literary’ and ‘non- literary’ discourses. Strictly speaking, the only etymological definition of the word ‘poetology’ would have it as a study or science of poetry/literature. This thesis argues that early Romantic writers’ understanding of ‘poetry’ and ‘science’ were broad enough to translate the terms as ‘literature’ and ‘knowledge’ respectively. Thus, poetology according to both its etymological roots and Romantic appropriation of those root-terms is any literature theorizing knowledge, and we have only to cast a cursory glance over the manifestos produced by not only early but also ‘second-generation’ Romantics to see how poetry engenders privileged forms of knowledge. For Wordsworth, ‘poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge’, and he follows
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