Romanticism and Time: Literary Temporalities

Abstract

In this volume, we have decided to take Blake’s aphorism as an invitation to see Romantic writing as a ‘production of time’; to look for the work of time within Romantic literature. One of the aims of this collection is to understand Romanticism as the product of its own time, in its ability to reflect history and in the emergence of its specific poetics through time. Blake’s words can also be read as a meditation on poetics unfolding ‘in time’: on poetic form as the product of rhyme and rhythm. Yet, if we attend to the reversibility that characterises Blake’s ‘Proverbs of Hell’, this aphorism also offers a vision of Romanticism as an active ‘production of time’, not only registering the passing of time but also shaping conceptions of time and making history. Romantic writing then also appears as an art of time, creating new representations of temporal phenomena and generating new modes of time-consciousness.