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Rhyme and Reason: Erasmus Darwin's Romanticism

Author(s)
Jackson, Noel B.
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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Abstract
The poetics of Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden, its status as an aesthetic as opposed to a purely scientific artifact, and the formal logic of the genre its author popularized have received scant historical attention. Yet in its time Darwin's contribution to the genre of "philosophical poetry" was thought dangerously radical not solely because of its content but because of the compound logic of its form. Effecting a more perfect union of scientific reason and the poetic imagination, Darwin's philosophical poetry conjoins as poetry the aesthetic and political aims of his work in a purposeful way that, while unmistakable to the conservative critics who attacked him, has largely escaped contemporary critical notice. Today Darwin's poetry may be viewed as a touchstone for debates over the legitimacy of perfectibilist schemes of political improvement during the period of the French Revolution.
Date issued
2009-06
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/53717
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section
Journal
Modern Language Quarterly
Publisher
Duke University Press
Citation
Jackson, Noel. “Rhyme and Reason: Erasmus Darwin's Romanticism.” Modern Language Quarterly 70.2 (2009): 171-194. © 2009 by University of Washington
Version: Final published version
ISSN
0026-7929

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