Romantic Consciousness: Blake to Mary Shelley

Description

Revolutionary thinking at the end of the eighteenth century prompted major English writers to probe the riddle of human consciousness and the ways in which it might differ from "Being" in a divine or universal sense. In the first of two studies, John Beer traces this question in writings by Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and the impact of their ideas on successors such as Keats, De Quincey, Byron and the Shelleys; relevance to later figures such as the Cambridge Apostles and Tennyson is also discussed. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 List of Illustrations......Page 9 Abbreviations......Page 10 Preface......Page 13 1 Consciousness and the Mystery of Being......Page 15 2 Blake’s Fear of Non Entity......Page 26 3 Coleridge, Wordsworth and ‘Unknown Modes of Being’......Page 35 4 Keats and the Highgate Nightingales......Page 68 5 De Quincey and the Dark Sublime......Page 92 6 Tennyson, the Cambridge Apostles and ‘Reality’......Page 120 7 Byron and Shelley: Polarities of Being......Page 148 8 Mary Shelley’s Mediation......Page 182 Appendix: Wordsworth’s Later Sense of Being......Page 193 Notes......Page 198 Index......Page 217