The thought of annihilation : the non-human in the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats
Capparelli, Jacopo M.
Capparelli, Jacopo M.
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Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats by amending the traditional view of their poetry as one which seeks to establish human subjectivity in a position of primary importance as a reaction to the depersonalizing forces of industrialization. Its amendment consists in the contention that this prioritizing of human subjectivity is based necessarily on the sublation or acceptance of the non-Human, which is defined as the complete opposite of the Human. Definitions of the terms non-Human, Human, and Humanity will be provided, as they are key to the renewed understanding of the poets in question. The thesis will also endeavor to outline the peculiar ways in which these poets articulate this necessary sublation or acceptance by first analyzing their stated theoretical positions, and then applying the results of this analysis to concrete instances of their poetry. Specifically, it will feature analyses of Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”, Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry”, and Keats’s letters on negative capability; it will then look at Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”, and Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. It will conclude that while both Wordsworth and Shelley sublate the non-Human for the renewal of the Human, respectively as a poet of ‘imaginary reaction’ and of ‘apocalyptic revolution’, Keats is the poet of quietistic stasis.
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Thesis (B.A. in English Language and Literature, Minor in Economics)--John Cabot University, Spring 2016.
Date
2016
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Keywords
William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, John Keats, 1795-1821, English poetry
Citation
Capparelli, Jacopo M. "The thought of annihilation : the non-human in the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2016.