The Romantic - Utilitarian Debate
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English Language and Literature
First Advisor
Bromwich, David
Abstract
AbstractThe Romantic-Utilitarian Debate Marcus Alaimo 2024 This dissertation discusses the early nineteenth-century exchange between British poets and philosophers who were responding to the social, cultural, and political upheavals emanating from the French Revolution. Whereas most previous interpretations of this moment have seen Romantic and Utilitarian ideas in sharp, intractable intellectual and ideological opposition, my dissertation attends to moments of surprising convergence. I do so, however, not simply to challenge the opposition that other commentators have seen, but instead to read various kinds of discourse – mainly poetry, philosophy, and cultural, political and literary criticism – as offering distinct generic models that could be leveraged by individual authors to express themselves in the context of this debate. These authors and the discursive modes they adopt are read above all as negotiating new climates of political debate in a rapidly transforming imperial Britain. Thus, rather than offering an in-depth exploration of the nature and meaning of a Romantic versus a Utilitarian worldview, I instead focus on how a specific author engages or adopts these emerging worldviews – themselves always in flux – for the sake of self-fashioning. At the same time, these personally inflected attempts at articulating identity are shown to shape broader cultural and political transformations in complex and novel ways. These more communal, public relationships include a new nationalistic British self-conception, the widespread dislocation of previous customs domestically, and the rise of liberalism as a political form that was meant to reconcile new forms of personal identity with one’s perceived relationship to novel forms of mass politics, like radicalism, populism, and democracy.
Recommended Citation
Alaimo, Marcus Anthony, "The Romantic - Utilitarian Debate" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1262.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1262
