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Reexamining Immortality in the Works of the Romantics

Ferris, Anna-Marie Keeley
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Abstract
In an era characterized by change and upheaval, the Romantics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century embraced the revolutionary impetus of the moment and reconsidered traditional ideologies while investing a new faith in the powers of the imagination. One such concept that is subject to Romantic reevaluation is immortality. Thus, this thesis examines the recurring but mutable concept of immortality in select works of Romantic poets: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Through a historical analysis, this thesis navigates the various forms and poetic manifestations that the concept of immortality takes from experiential and spiritual to reputational and artistic. Though these Romantic writers differ in their interrogation of the concept of immortality, it becomes evident that they all share a desire to radically examine immortality through their privileging of the subjectivity of experience and their embrace of ambiguity and mystery, which they find central to their philosophies and to the act of poetic creation.
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Thesis (B.A. in English Literature, Minor in Art History)--John Cabot University, Spring 2023.
Date
2023
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Keywords
Immortality in literature, Romanticism
Citation
Ferris, Anne-Marie Keeley. "Reexamining Immortality in the Works of the Romantics". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2023.
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