Meaning of Life in Romantic Poetry and Poetics

<p>This volume brings together an impressive range of established and emerging scholars to investigate the meaning of ‘life’ in Romantic poetry and poetics. This investigation involves sustained attention to a set of challenging questions at the heart of British Romantic poetic practice and theory. Is poetry alive for the Romantic poets? If so how? Does ‘life’ always mean ‘life’? In a range of essays from a variety of complementary perspectives a number of major Romantic poets are examined in detail. The fate of Romantic conceptions of ‘life’ in later poetry also receives attention. Through for examples a revision of Blake’s relationship to so-called rationalism a renewed examination of Wordsworth’s fascination with country graveyards an exploration of Shelley’s concept of survival and a discussion of the notions of ‘life’ in Byron Kierkegaard and Mozart this volume opens up new and exciting terrain in Romantic poetry’s relation to literary theory the history of philosophy ethics and aesthetics.</p>