Romantic Things: A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud

Description

Our thoughts are shaped as much by what things make of us as by what we make of them. Lyric poetry is especially concerned with things and their relationship to thought, sense, and understanding. In Romantic Things, Mary Jacobus explores the world of objects and phenomena in nature as expressed in Romantic poetry alongside the theme of sentience and sensory deprivation in literature and art. Jacobus discusses objects and attributes that test our perceptions and preoccupy both Romantic poetry and modern philosophy. John Clare, John Constable, Rainer Maria Rilke, W. G. Sebald, and Gerhard Richter make appearances around the central figure of William Wordsworth as Jacobus explores trees, rocks, clouds, breath, sleep, deafness, and blindness in their work. While she thinks through these things, she is assisted by the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy. Helping us think more deeply about things that are at once visible and invisible, seen and unseen, felt and unfeeling, Romantic Things opens our eyes to what has been previously overlooked in lyric and Romantic poetry. Contents......Page 8 List of Figures......Page 9 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction: The Gravity of Things ......Page 12 Chapter 1. Cloud Studies: The Visible Invisible......Page 21 Chapter 2. Pastoral, after History: The Apple Orchard......Page 47 Chapter 3. Touching Things: “Nutting” and the Standing of Trees......Page 72 Chapter 4. Composing Sound: The Deaf Dalesman, “The Brothers,” and Epitaphic Signs......Page 90 Chapter 5. “Distressful Gift”: Talking to the Dead......Page 105 Chapter 6. The Breath of Life: Wordsworth and the Gravity of Thought......Page 125 Chapter 7. “On the Very Brink of Vacancy”: Things Unbeseen......Page 139 Chapter 8. Senseless Rocks......Page 161 Notes......Page 188 Index......Page 224