Romanticism: A Theory

“It is the large generalisation, limited by a happy particularity, which is the fruitful conception.” For the historian of ideas these words of Alfred North Whitehead’s represent a sort of holy grail. And yet when it comes to the study of Romanticism, our generalisations have been large but, for the most part, barren. Indeed, finding something interesting to say about Wordsworth that is equally true of Blake, and not obviously false of Shelley, feels like one of those ancient mathematical obsessions, such as the quadrature of the circle or trisecting an angle, ending always in failure and, not infrequently, madness.