Romanticism and the Emotions

Joel Faflak is Professor of English and Theory, and Director of the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities at Western University, Ontario. He is author of Romantic Psychoanalysis: The Burden of the Mystery (2008) and co-editor of A Handbook to Romanticism Studies (2012). Richard C. Sha is Professor of Literature and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at American University, Washington, DC. He is author of Perverse Romanticism: Aesthetics and Sexuality in Britain, 1750–1832 (2009) and editor of Historicizing Romantic Sexuality (2006).

Introduction: feeling Romanticism Joel Faflak and Richard C. Sha; 1. The motion behind Romantic emotion: towards a chemistry and physics of feeling Richard C. Sha; 2. 'A certain mediocrity': Adam Smith's moral behaviourism Thomas Pfau; 3. Like love: the feel of Shelley's similes Julie Carlson; 4. Jane Austen and the persuasion of happiness Joel Faflak; 5. The general fast and humiliation: tracking feeling in wartime Mary A. Favret; 6. A peculiar community: Mary Shelley, Godwin, and the abyss of emotion Tilottama Rajan; 7. Emotion without content: primary affect and pure potentiality in Wordsworth David Collings; 8. Kant's peace, Wordsworth's slumber Jacques Khalip; 9. Living a ruined life: De Quincey's damage Rei Terada.