Synopses & Reviews
Drawing on a range of new archival materials, John Thelwall and the Materialist Imagination reassesses Thelwall's diverse body of work - literary, political, and elocutionary - from the vantage of his heterodox contributions to Romantic-era science. This book argues that Thelwall's scientific materialism merged with his reformist politics and literary imagination in previously unexplored ways to anchor his career over four decades, as he attempted in speech and writing to catalyse democratic reform in the body politic. Through the prism of Thelwall's works, the book demonstrates that materialism was not merely a relic of Enlightenment empiricism and the utopian optimism of the 1790s, but a formative element of British culture well into the nineteenth century - one that was intertwined with idealist modes of thought to make up the double-helix DNA of Romanticism.
Synopsis
John Thelwall and the Materialist Imagination reassesses Thelwall's eclectic body of work from the perspective of his heterodox materialist arguments about the imagination, political reform, and the principle of life itself, and his contributions to Romantic-era science.
About the Author
Yasmin Solomonescu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame, USA. Previously she held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship at York University, Toronto. In addition to publishing articles on Thelwall and Romantic-era literature, she has edited John Thelwall: Critical Reassessments (2011) and, with Michael Scrivener and Judith Thompson, Thelwall's The Daughter of Adoption (2013).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: 'Mister Surgeon Thelwall'
1. Vital Principles: From the Animal Body to the Body Politic
2. Errant Sympathies: The Peripatetic
3. From Self to Sentient Nature: Poems Written in Close Confinement and Poems, Chiefly Written in Retirement
4. Between Hope and Necessity: The Fairy of the Lake, The Hope of Albion, and The Daughter of Adoption
5. The Language of Nature: Elocutionary Writings and Poems, Chiefly Suggested by the Scenery of Nature
6. The Materialist Imagination: Late Poetry and Criticism
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index