The Myth and Identity of the Romantic Artist in European Literature

Elena Anastasaki is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the Department of Language and Intercultural Studies at the University of Thessaly (Greece). She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the Universities of Kent and Paris 8.

Acknowledgments

Notes on Translation

Introduction






Overview of the Background Scene



Outline of Approach, Key Concepts and Methodology



Book Structure

Part One

Chapter 1, Forming Identity: An Interdisciplinary Approach






Ethos and the Image of the Author



Narrative and Identity Theories: Narrating the Self, an Ontological Dilemma



Identity and Aesthetics





Kant, Schiller, and Romantic Aesthetics



Chapter 2, The Making of Artistic Genius








A philosophical Concept



The Figure of Chatterton





Coleridge’s Chatterton: A Life-long Companion



Alfred de Vigny’s Chatterton: The Emblem of a Social Cause





Chapter 3, Goethe’s Prometheus, Rousseau’s Pygmalion, and their Progeny








"Here sit I, forming mortals / After my image": The Promethean Artist





Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Prometheus"



Lord Byron, "Ode to Prometheus"



Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound



Victor Hugo, "Genius," "The grieving poem weeps"



Théophile Gautier, "On the Prometheus of Madrid"




Pygmalion and the Ontological Status of the Work of Art





Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pygmalion



Thomas Lovell Beddoes, "Pygmalion, or the Cyprian Statuary"





Part Two

Chapter 4, "Now, if I know myself, I should say, that I have no character at all"–Byron’s Mythmaking Strategies








The Quest for a Personal Voice



The Poet’s Physical Appearance



The Poet as Pilgrim: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage



Poetic Ventriloquism: The Lament of Tasso and The Prophecy of Dante



Byron’s Public Persona



Chapter 5, Percy Shelley and the Metaphysical Authenticity of the Poet








Alastor, or The Adventures of the Poetic Mind



From Aesthetic Experience to the Aesthetic Self



Adonais, or the Self from Without – Pivotal Moments of Self Awareness



From Poet to Poet: "To Wordsworth" and "Lines to __" ("Sonnet to Byron")



Chapter 6, Honoré de Balzac, the Napoleon of Letters








"[L]a tête dans le ciel et les pieds sur cette terre" – Balzac’s Fictional Artists





The Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man



The Artist as Martyr




Sympathetic Parody: Grotesque and Sublime Identities





The Bourgeois Artist





Chapter 7, Théophile Gautier, Stylistic Identity and Poetic Time








The Negation of the Self: Les Jeunes-France



The Golden Fleece: A Quest for Rubens’ Blonds, or How Art Spoils Reality



Autobiographic Sketches and the Poet as Shapeshifter



Conclusion, A Sociopoetical Approach to Genius








Materialistic Representations of Genius



The Poet’s Two Bodies



Napoleon



Artistic Identity as a Narrative Construct in a European Context



Works Cited and Consulted