Romanticism at Scale

This thesis contends that scale is Romantic, and Romanticism is scalar. Defined as a ‘difference in size that makes a difference’ (after Gregory Bateson), scale is both real and discursive, and can be understood as an aspect of the historical, economic, and intellectual transformations in relation to which Romanticism has historically been theorised. Mechanistic logic; capitalist labour relations; the rise of industrialisation and of globalisation; the emergence of print culture—all of these are dependent on what Anna Tsing has identified as the logic of ‘scalability’, and all of them, moreover, have been articulated as crucial determinants of Romanticism. The rise of Modernity, Tsing argues, is the rise of scalability; and Romanticism, argues Michel Löwy, is Modernity’s self-critique. No major study has yet sought to understand these phenomena in relation to one another. This thesis is an attempt to remedy this situation with two concurrent interventions. The first of these is to employ scale as a critical mechanism for understanding Romanticism; the second is to direct the critical apparatus of Romanticism at scale. My chapters are each oriented towards understanding a different aspect of scale in relation to a different Romantic author, and in relation to a mode of literary activity: reading, thinking and writing. In Chapter One, ‘Reading Blake; or, Scale Errors *on the Moon*’, I argue that Blake’s works encourage the reader to participate in a mode of reading which obfuscates the propriety of time and space in the name of a radically boundless hope. Scale, for Blake, I contend, is a means of thinking about futurity. Chapter Two, ‘Thinking Coleridge: *Life*, Science, and the *Scala Naturae*’, is concerned primarily with epistemology. In order to satisfy both the indisputable power of scale- invariant mechanistic prediction, and the apparent necessity for irresolvable indistinction in theoretical work, Coleridge radically modifies the ancient concept of the *scala natura* to posit a dynamic spectrum of scalable and nonscalable forms of knowledge production. The final chapter, ‘Writing John Clare: Infinite Smallness, Non-Identity, and *The Constructed Clare*’, contemplates issues in Clare’s reception and editorial history relating to his perceived smallness, and detects in them a form of resilient knowledge about Clare’s own understanding of the relation between the infinite and the infinitesimal.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Todd, Lewis

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Wilson, Ross

• Blake
• British Romanticism
• Clare
• Coleridge
• History of Science
• Romanticism
• Scale

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/75a088bf-2e30-4f51-bc07-5fc9ed9bb6c7/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109226

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/369391