Related Papers
Poetics Today
Shelley's Theory of Mind: From Radical Empiricism to Cognitive Romanticism
2009 •
Mark Bruhn
Synaesthesia in Shelley's poetry-.pdf
1998 •
Joël Mortensen
The dissertation was written in 1997-1998 for my Master's degree when I was a student of poetry at the Sorbonne University in Paris. It was the first step of a philosophical research, which continued later with cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind. I had the intuition that synaesthesia was a key phenomena to understand the mind. I also considered that it would be relevant to start with an in-depth study of sensations. Metaphor concentrates meaning and I therefore consider it interesting as an intuitive "modelisation tool" to start with. I then had the ambition to introduce cognitive poetics in France (but this ambition came perhaps too early). My following post-graduate (DEA) dissertation I wrote in 1999-2000 was therefore named "Éléments d'une poétique cognitive" ("Elements of cognitive poetics").Mémoire de poésie anglaise. ---- "Shelley was willing to “awaken sensations like those which animate[d his] bosom” that is to say awaken experiences of mental, physical and emotional feelings resembling his own and existing in their potentiality within the receptive reader’s combinational or suggestible mind. That sensory and emotional picturing should partake in the understanding and “feeling” of ideas is an evidence which was interesting to study on the limited field of the mysterious semantic and psycho-physiological complexity of Shelley’s poetic synaesthesia. With this thrilling aim in view, we will stick to Shelley’s personality and mentality, discovered through his essays and letters, but also rely on old and recent studies in psychology, physiology, cognition1 or symbolism, made by philosophers, psychologists, literary critics and by poets and artists. In the first part of our dissertation which we entitled “Shelley and synaesthesia”, we will try to find a psychophysiological explanation for Shelley’s synaesthesia and in a second part, we will apply our discoveries and reflections to some chosen poems in order to evaluate the importance of this type of imagery in Shelley’s poetry. This study has also the ambition to be a reflection on the metamorphosis of human sensibility, without which no artistic works (its avatars) can live, last, and above all be shared. We hope to cast some interesting subjective light on the secret combining qualities of the creative poetic mind. In other words, this dissertation was also written as an attempt to explore the sources of art and creation. " (1997-1998)
Soulful Sensorium: The Body in Early British Romantic Brain Science
Lisa Ann Robertson
In 1749 physician David Hartley made the radical proposition that “the Brain is . . . the seat of the rational Soul” (81). His Observations on Man maps mental phenomena against physiological processes in order to formulate a material theory of mind. This new brain-based account of sentience significantly altered the status of the body in late eighteenth century Britain, particularly after Joseph Priestley republished an abridged version of Observations in 1775. His prefatory essays, which critiqued dualist theories of mind proffered by Scottish Common Sense philosophers, along with his ardent defence of materialism, published in Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (1777), sparked intense debate regarding the sentient principle and the body’s role in perception. Hartley’s and Priestley’s work overturned traditional Christian and neo-Platonic views of the body as an “incumbrance of clay, . . . fetters of matter, and . . . [a] dreadful contagion of flesh and blood,” thus opening a new arena of scientific discourse that profoundly altered modern understandings of the body (Priestley 47). My presentation examines their work from a philosophical and cultural perspective with respect to the history of brain science and its influence on Romantic theories of poetry and imagination.
"Affect and Air-The Speculative Spirit of the Age," in _Romanticism and Speculative Realism_ Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Michele Speitz
Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" : romantic imagery in Mary Shelley's Frankstein
2006 •
Jaqueline Donada
Spontaneous Overflow of Powerful Feelings": Romantic Imagery in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
2009 •
Jaqueline Bohn Donada
Romantic English literature – written at a time when prose fiction was predominantly a medium for sheer entertainment – is rooted in poetry. One or two novelists may exceptionally be granted the adjective “Romantic”, but Mary Shelley is not ranked among them. For centuries, her work has been restricted to that section in handbooks reserved for exotic Gothic literature. This thesis argues that literary criticism has failed to recognize Frankenstein’s obvious relation with the movement. The argument will be fostered by a brief look at such handbooks, and developed through the analysis of the imagery of the novel, so as to trace the Romantic elements there contained. The analysis relies mainly on the frame developed by Northrop Frye concerning the nature and function of imagery in literature. The concept of intertextuality will also be useful as a tool to account for the insertion of images in the novel, and for the novel’s insertion within the Romantic context. The work is divided int...
Shelley’s idea of nature a study of the interrelationship of subject and object in the major poems
1995 •
John Metson
The thesis offers an interpretation of Shelley's poetry which focuses on his treatment of external nature. Its main argument is that a subject-object dialectic lies at the basis of his thought and style. Manifesting itself as a tension and oscillation between dualist and monist tendencies, this dialectic underlies the opposing strains of thought associated with his sceptical idealism; it informs the relationship between various contraries with which he is recurrently concerned, such as reason and feeling, necessity and freedom, language and thought; and it accounts for some major characteristics of his style--for example, its self-reflexiveness, indeterminacy, and restless forward momentum. Nature is found to play a complex dual function in this dialectical process: first, as the circumference to the circle of which mind is the centre, it provides the material of thought and poetry; secondly, through its cyclic processes, it serves as an emblem of the mind's dynamic relation...
The Cambridge Companion to Shelley
2006 •
Timothy Morton
Sleep and affect in Old English poetry
2016 •
Nicole Songstad
The Mental Anatomies of William Godwin and Mary Shelley by William Brewer
Heidi Thomson
