Imagination and Science in Romanticism

Imagination and Science in Romanticism

Author: Richard C. Sha

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1421439832

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Sha concludes that both fields benefited from thinking about how imagination could cooperate with reason—but that this partnership was impossible unless imagination's penchant for fantasy could be contained.


Book Synopsis Imagination and Science in Romanticism by : Richard C. Sha

Download or read book Imagination and Science in Romanticism written by Richard C. Sha and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sha concludes that both fields benefited from thinking about how imagination could cooperate with reason—but that this partnership was impossible unless imagination's penchant for fantasy could be contained.


Imagination and Science in Romanticism

Imagination and Science in Romanticism

Author: Richard C Sha

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781421441245

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How did the idea of the imagination impact Romantic literature and science?2018 Winner, Jean-Pierre Barricelli Book Prize, The International Conference on RomanticismRichard C. Sha argues that scientific understandings of the imagination indelibly shaped literary Romanticism. Challenging the idea that the imagination found a home only on the side of the literary, as a mental vehicle for transcending the worldly materials of the sciences, Sha shows how imagination helped to operationalize both scientific and literary discovery. Essentially, the imagination forced writers to consider the difference between what was possible and impossible while thinking about how that difference could be known. Sha examines how the imagination functioned within physics and chemistry in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, neurology in Blake's Vala, or The Four Zoas, physiology in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, and obstetrics and embryology in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He also demonstrates how the imagination was called upon to do aesthetic and scientific work using primary examples taken from the work of scientists and philosophers Davy, Dalton, Faraday, Priestley, Kant, Mary Somerville, Oersted, Marcet, Smellie, Swedenborg, Blumenbach, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Von Baer, among others. Sha concludes that both fields benefited from thinking about how imagination could cooperate with reason-but that this partnership was impossible unless imagination's penchant for fantasy could be contained.


Book Synopsis Imagination and Science in Romanticism by : Richard C Sha

Download or read book Imagination and Science in Romanticism written by Richard C Sha and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the idea of the imagination impact Romantic literature and science?2018 Winner, Jean-Pierre Barricelli Book Prize, The International Conference on RomanticismRichard C. Sha argues that scientific understandings of the imagination indelibly shaped literary Romanticism. Challenging the idea that the imagination found a home only on the side of the literary, as a mental vehicle for transcending the worldly materials of the sciences, Sha shows how imagination helped to operationalize both scientific and literary discovery. Essentially, the imagination forced writers to consider the difference between what was possible and impossible while thinking about how that difference could be known. Sha examines how the imagination functioned within physics and chemistry in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, neurology in Blake's Vala, or The Four Zoas, physiology in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, and obstetrics and embryology in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He also demonstrates how the imagination was called upon to do aesthetic and scientific work using primary examples taken from the work of scientists and philosophers Davy, Dalton, Faraday, Priestley, Kant, Mary Somerville, Oersted, Marcet, Smellie, Swedenborg, Blumenbach, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Von Baer, among others. Sha concludes that both fields benefited from thinking about how imagination could cooperate with reason-but that this partnership was impossible unless imagination's penchant for fantasy could be contained.


Inventions of the Imagination

Inventions of the Imagination

Author: Richard T. Gray

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2011-10-17

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0295801654

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The dialectic between reason and imagination forms a key element in Romantic and post- Romantic philosophy, science, literature, and art. Inventions of the Imagination explores the diverse theories and assessments of this dialectic in essays by philosophers and literary and cultural critics. By the end of the eighteenth century, reason as the predominant human faculty had run its course, and imagination emerged as another force whose contributions to human intellectual existence and productivity had to be newly calculated and constantly recalibrated. The attempt to establish a universal form of reason alongside a plurality of imaginative capacities describes the ideological program of modernism from the end of the eighteenth century to the present day. This collection chronicles some of the vicissitudes in the conceptualization and evaluation of the imagination across time and in various disciplines.


Book Synopsis Inventions of the Imagination by : Richard T. Gray

Download or read book Inventions of the Imagination written by Richard T. Gray and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dialectic between reason and imagination forms a key element in Romantic and post- Romantic philosophy, science, literature, and art. Inventions of the Imagination explores the diverse theories and assessments of this dialectic in essays by philosophers and literary and cultural critics. By the end of the eighteenth century, reason as the predominant human faculty had run its course, and imagination emerged as another force whose contributions to human intellectual existence and productivity had to be newly calculated and constantly recalibrated. The attempt to establish a universal form of reason alongside a plurality of imaginative capacities describes the ideological program of modernism from the end of the eighteenth century to the present day. This collection chronicles some of the vicissitudes in the conceptualization and evaluation of the imagination across time and in various disciplines.


The Spiritual History of Ice

The Spiritual History of Ice

Author: E. Wilson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2003-05-15

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1403981809

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At the end of the eighteenth century, scientists for the first time demonstrated what medieval and renaissance alchemists had long suspected; ice is not lifeless but vital, a crystalline revelation of vigorous powers. Studied in esoteric and exoterical representations of frozen phenomena, several Romantic figures - including Coleridge and Poe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emerson and Thoreau - challenged traditional notions of ice as waste and instead celebrated crystals, glaciers, and the poles as special disclosures of a holistic principle of being. The Spiritual History of Ice explores this ecology of frozen shapes in fascinating detail, revealing not only a neglected current of the Romantic age but also a secret history and psychology of ice.


Book Synopsis The Spiritual History of Ice by : E. Wilson

Download or read book The Spiritual History of Ice written by E. Wilson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-05-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the end of the eighteenth century, scientists for the first time demonstrated what medieval and renaissance alchemists had long suspected; ice is not lifeless but vital, a crystalline revelation of vigorous powers. Studied in esoteric and exoterical representations of frozen phenomena, several Romantic figures - including Coleridge and Poe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emerson and Thoreau - challenged traditional notions of ice as waste and instead celebrated crystals, glaciers, and the poles as special disclosures of a holistic principle of being. The Spiritual History of Ice explores this ecology of frozen shapes in fascinating detail, revealing not only a neglected current of the Romantic age but also a secret history and psychology of ice.


Perverse Romanticism

Perverse Romanticism

Author: Richard C. Sha

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2009-01-12

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1421402610

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Richard C. Sha’s revealing study considers how science shaped notions of sexuality, reproduction, and gender in the Romantic period. Through careful and imaginative readings of various scientific texts, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Longinus, and the works of such writers as William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Lord Byron, Sha explores the influence of contemporary aesthetics and biology on literary Romanticism. Revealing that ideas of sexuality during the Romantic era were much more fluid and undecided than they are often characterized in the existing scholarship, Sha’s innovative study complicates received claims concerning the shift from perversity to perversion in the nineteenth century. He observes that the questions of perversity—or purposelessness—became simultaneously critical in Kantian aesthetics, biological functionalism, and Romantic ideas of private and public sexuality. The Romantics, then, sought to reconceptualize sexual pleasure as deriving from mutuality rather than from the biological purpose of reproduction. At the nexus of Kantian aesthetics, literary analysis, and the history of medicine, Perverse Romanticism makes an important contribution to the study of sexuality in the long eighteenth century.


Book Synopsis Perverse Romanticism by : Richard C. Sha

Download or read book Perverse Romanticism written by Richard C. Sha and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-01-12 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard C. Sha’s revealing study considers how science shaped notions of sexuality, reproduction, and gender in the Romantic period. Through careful and imaginative readings of various scientific texts, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Longinus, and the works of such writers as William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Lord Byron, Sha explores the influence of contemporary aesthetics and biology on literary Romanticism. Revealing that ideas of sexuality during the Romantic era were much more fluid and undecided than they are often characterized in the existing scholarship, Sha’s innovative study complicates received claims concerning the shift from perversity to perversion in the nineteenth century. He observes that the questions of perversity—or purposelessness—became simultaneously critical in Kantian aesthetics, biological functionalism, and Romantic ideas of private and public sexuality. The Romantics, then, sought to reconceptualize sexual pleasure as deriving from mutuality rather than from the biological purpose of reproduction. At the nexus of Kantian aesthetics, literary analysis, and the history of medicine, Perverse Romanticism makes an important contribution to the study of sexuality in the long eighteenth century.


Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination

Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination

Author: Frederick Burwick

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0271042966

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Book Synopsis Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination by : Frederick Burwick

Download or read book Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination written by Frederick Burwick and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Dreaming in Books

Dreaming in Books

Author: Andrew Piper

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-08

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0226669726

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Examining novels, critical editions, gift books, translations, and illustrated books, as well as the communities who made them, Dreaming in Books tells a wide-ranging story of the book's identity at the turn of the nineteenth century. In so doing, it shows how many of the most pressing modern communicative concerns are not unique to the digital age but emerged with a particular sense of urgency during the bookish upheavals of the romantic era. In revisiting the book's rise through the prism of romantic literature, Piper aims to revise our assumptions about romanticism, the medium of the printed book, and, ultimately, the future of the book in our so-called digital age."--Pub. desc.


Book Synopsis Dreaming in Books by : Andrew Piper

Download or read book Dreaming in Books written by Andrew Piper and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining novels, critical editions, gift books, translations, and illustrated books, as well as the communities who made them, Dreaming in Books tells a wide-ranging story of the book's identity at the turn of the nineteenth century. In so doing, it shows how many of the most pressing modern communicative concerns are not unique to the digital age but emerged with a particular sense of urgency during the bookish upheavals of the romantic era. In revisiting the book's rise through the prism of romantic literature, Piper aims to revise our assumptions about romanticism, the medium of the printed book, and, ultimately, the future of the book in our so-called digital age."--Pub. desc.


The Creative Imagination

The Creative Imagination

Author: James Engell

Publisher:

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780674333246

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Book Synopsis The Creative Imagination by : James Engell

Download or read book The Creative Imagination written by James Engell and published by . This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Romanticism and the Emotions

Romanticism and the Emotions

Author: Joel Faflak

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-03-13

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1107052394

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The first essay collection to examine emotion across the span of Romantic literature and thought, in light of new scholarship.


Book Synopsis Romanticism and the Emotions by : Joel Faflak

Download or read book Romanticism and the Emotions written by Joel Faflak and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-13 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first essay collection to examine emotion across the span of Romantic literature and thought, in light of new scholarship.


The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells

The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells

Author: Professor Michael R Page

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-05-28

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1409479218

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At the close of the eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin declared that he would 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science,' beginning, Michael Page argues, a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology, and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Examining the interchange between emerging scientific ideas-specifically evolution and ecology-new technologies, and literature in nineteenth-century Britain, Page shows how British writers from Darwin to H.G. Wells confronted the burgeoning expansion of scientific knowledge that was radically redefining human understanding and experience of the natural world, of human species, and of the self. The wide range of authors covered in Page's ambitious study permits him to explore an impressive array of topics that include the role of the Romantic era in the molding of scientific and cultural perspectives; the engagement of William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley with questions raised by contemporary science; Mary Shelley's conflicted views on the unfolding prospects of modernity; and how Victorian writers like Charles Kingsley, Samuel Butler, and W.H. Hudson responded to the implications of evolutionary theory. Page concludes with the scientific romances of H.G. Wells, to demonstrate how evolutionary fantasies reached the pinnacle of synthesis between evolutionary science and the imagination at the close of the century.


Book Synopsis The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells by : Professor Michael R Page

Download or read book The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells written by Professor Michael R Page and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the close of the eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin declared that he would 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science,' beginning, Michael Page argues, a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology, and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Examining the interchange between emerging scientific ideas-specifically evolution and ecology-new technologies, and literature in nineteenth-century Britain, Page shows how British writers from Darwin to H.G. Wells confronted the burgeoning expansion of scientific knowledge that was radically redefining human understanding and experience of the natural world, of human species, and of the self. The wide range of authors covered in Page's ambitious study permits him to explore an impressive array of topics that include the role of the Romantic era in the molding of scientific and cultural perspectives; the engagement of William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley with questions raised by contemporary science; Mary Shelley's conflicted views on the unfolding prospects of modernity; and how Victorian writers like Charles Kingsley, Samuel Butler, and W.H. Hudson responded to the implications of evolutionary theory. Page concludes with the scientific romances of H.G. Wells, to demonstrate how evolutionary fantasies reached the pinnacle of synthesis between evolutionary science and the imagination at the close of the century.