Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin

Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Modalities of Fragmentation

Thomas McFarland

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780691101088
  9780691064376
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400855964
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Despite their hopeful aspirations to wholeness in life and spirit, Thomas McFarland contends, the Romantics were ruins amidst ruins," fragments of human existence in a disintegrating world. Focusing on Wordsworth and Coleridge, Professor McFarland shows how this was true not only for each of these Romantics in particular but also for Romanticism in general.

Originally published in 1981.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• Key to Brief Titles Cited
• Introduction. Fragmented Modalities and the Criteria of Romanticism
• 1. The Symbiosis of Coleridge and Wordsworth
• 2. Coleridge's Anxiety
• 3. The Significant Group: Wordsworth's Fears in Solitude
• 4. Problems of Style in the Poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge
• First Landing Place. Poetry and the Poem: The Structure of Poetic Content
• 5. A Complex Dialogue: Coleridge's Doctrine of Polarity and Its European Contexts
• 6. The Psychic Economy and Cultural Meaning of Coleridge's Magnum Opus
• Second Landing Place. The Place Beyond the Heavens: True Being, Transcendence, and the Symbolic Indication of Wholeness
• Index