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Waysek, Elizabeth S.

English

2006

MA

The goal of this thesis project is to prove that British and German Romanticism are inextricably linked through theory and poetics. Not only are they "linked" - the work of German Transcendental philosophers and German poets assisted the genesis of the British Romantic movement. The title of this project, "Sublime Transcendence: Finding the Matrix of British and German Romanticism," refers to the "matrix" that exists between the two Romanticisms, which serves as an interaction through which something new is developing. The situation that I have examined is the dialogue between the two movements and it is my belief that these two movements, their literature, their theory, and their interaction, formed a system of discourse that placed an emphasis on the mind of the individual and his/her capacity of thought, in addition to reliance upon reason. The two literatures are connected through Kant and it is his writings on the sublime, as well as Burke's, which are central to the matrix. It is only in Romantic poetry, only in the scenes and situations created by Wordsworth and Coleridge that we begin to see a picture of transcendence. Romantic poetry allowed for a reinterpretation of the natural world and the intangible world of emotion and intellect. This is clarified in an excerpt from Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, "The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity... but by the pleasurable activity of the mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself" (Chapter XIV). The poet holds the keys to transcendence and experience, and nature, when viewed through the eyes of a poet, is capable of mediating the good and the bad, the beautiful and ugly, joy and terror. This central focus on the mind of the individual is prefigured in Psychoanalytic theory. Freud's essay on the "Unheimlich" seeks to make sense of an inexplicable feeling that can be both frightening and familiar. These opposing feelings that are present in the unconscious mind are ones that the Romantic poet tries to make sense of through poetry. The partnership of Wordsworth and Coleridge, their joint publication of Lyrical Ballads, and theoretical writings contributed to the matrix which defined this literary epoch and opened new channels of thought that extended through Freud's writings into the twentieth century.