Romantic Fiat

In the Romantic period's economics of 'fiat' money the legacy of romanticism involves absolutist gestures of verbal fiat. Focused on William Wordsworth, but in constant range of his poet-successors and modern critics, Romantic Fiat presents an argument for a double romantic signature of 'let there be' and 'let be.'

"In the course of the volume, Lindstrom gathers an impressive number of 'let be' statements . . . From discussions of Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' and 'The Old Cumberland Beggar' to Shelley's Peter Bell and Byron's Don Juan, the book accomplishes something that is all too rare in scholarship . . . the book changes what one notices in a poetry that has become all too familiar . . . I conclude with an injunction: 'do not let this book be,' by which I mean, read this book." - Studies in Romanticism

Autorentext
ERIC REID LINDSTROM is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Vermont, USA. His publications include articles in Literary Imagination and Studies in Romanticism - this is his first book.

Inhalt
Acknowledgments Introduction: Fiat in Lyric PART I: GIVING COMMANDS AND LETTING GO Romanticism and 'Exaggeration of Thought' The Command to Nature Wordsworth's Useless Fiat in The Old Cumberland Beggar PART II: ONTOLOGY AND THE LYRIC Between Cant and Anguish: Hume in Coleridge's Imagination Wordsworth and the Beautiful Day PART III: BLESSING CURSING Contracting Obi: Shelley's Cosmopolitanism and the Curse of Poetry Paper Money Poets Coda: Nature Poets and Fiat Money Index