Romanticism and the Androgynous Sublime

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Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1996 - 153 pages
This book studies and articulates the emergence from the poetical subtext of six major English romantics of "the androgynous sublime", a mode that conflates the motif of psychic androgyny (traceable as far back as the Book of Genesis and Plato's Symposium) with the mode of sublimity, first discussed by Longinus and much debated from the eighteenth century onward. Frequently echoed by the romantic poets, Milton's description of the Holy Spirit's role in the creation of the world is androgynous. Since humane creativity mirrors divine creativity, it follows that the artist qua artist muct also be androgynous - that is, endowed with what Lyrical Ballads, calls "a more comprehensive soul" than is "supposed to be common among mankind". Characterized by a flexuous, limber style and an association with androgynous subject matter, the androgynous sublime subverts conventional notions of sublimity while offering a more comprehensive model with which to supplement, of non supplant, them. The methodology of this study is to present a "counter-deconstructive" reading of the text and, where applicable, designs of Blake, as well as the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, seen from this somewhat novel but not ignoble perspective.
 

Contents

Introduction
13
Blakes Myth of Divine Androgyny
23
Theogony and Androgyny
27
From Misogyny to Renewed Androgyny
29
Theology versus Androgyny
31
The Androgynous Sublime
35
Wordsworth and the Patriarchal Sublime
49
The Aqueous and Admonitory Sublime
50
Manfred as Destroyer and Preserver
92
Androgynous Sublimity in Don Juan
95
Shelleys Androgynous Quest
101
Shelleys intensest rime
109
The Sublime Androgyny of Adonais
113
Keatss Immortal Androgyny
116
False versus Sublime Androgyny
127
Conclusion
129

Apocalypse and the Death of Dad
57
From Darkness to Light
62
Coleridge From the Analogical to the Androgynous Sublime
67
Coleridges Androgynous Sublime
73
Byrons Sublime Androgyny
86
Notes
133
Glossary
143
Works Cited
144
Index
149
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Page 16 - So God created man in his own image ; — male and female created he them.
Page 16 - Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, Dove-like, sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it pregnant...

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