Ideal communities of the British Romantics

This dissertation considers the ideal communal formations figured within the work of some of the major British writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to show that their work is essentially concerned with others. Although much criticism of the last thirty years has emphasized the social subject matter in their works, the once almost universally-held belief that the British Romantics are exclusively interested in the self at the expense of larger communities still remains in some academic communities, and this dissertation attempts to continue the contesting of this lingering (mis)conception. The works of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, Lord Byron, and Walter Scott will be the primary focus for this study.; The writings and art of the aforementioned persons are not monolithic, however, in terms of the types of ideal communities they propose and the specific social concerns these figurations raise. Their ideal communities and social concerns are extremely diverse, though in some instances there exist enough commonalities among the writings of two authors to allow a thematic grouping together. Chapter One focuses on the natural and personal-domestic ideal communities in the writings of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, arguing that the inclusion of like-minded others and exclusion of many other "others" reflect the writers' epistemological and ontological views. Chapter Two examines the essentially inclusive and human ideal communities in the writings of Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, revealing how their ideas about sympathetic love and philosophical skepticism create the conditions where self and human others exist in a dynamic, ever-changing, and equal relationship. Chapter Three considers the totally inclusive, unified and yet paradoxically diverse communal figurations in the writings and art of William Blake, revealing how these figurations rely on the simultaneous existence of content that insists on a universalizing unity and form that engenders difference. Chapter Four examines the communities of narrative personae in the writings of Lord Byron and Walter Scott, showing how these communities are formed through ironic undercutting and result in the expansion and equalization of narrative perspectives, and the authorization of the reader.