The Meaning of Life in Romantic Poetry and Poetics

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 Blakes relationship to so-called rationalism, a renewed examination of Wordsworths fascination with country graveyards, an exploration of Shelleys 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 poetrys relation to literary theory, the history of philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics.