Rethinking the Romantic Era: Androgynous Subjectivity and the Recreative in the Writings of Mary Robinson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Mary Shelley

177 Pages·2020·1.254 MB·English

by  Kathryn S. Freeman

Rethinking the Romantic Era
ii
Rethinking the Romantic Era

Androgynous Subjectivity and the
Recreative in the Writings of Mary
Robinson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and
Mary Shelley
Kathryn S. Freeman
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks
of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain 2021
Copyright © Kathryn S. Freeman, 2021
Kathryn S. Freeman has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute an extension
of this copyright page.
Cover design: Eleanor Rose
Cover image © Jane Freeman
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this
book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any
inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can
accept no responsibility for any such changes.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-6740-7
ePDF: 978-1-3501-6743-8
eBook: 978-1-3501-6742-1
Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India
To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.
This book is dedicated to my son, Jordan, and my sisters, Jane, Linda, and
Elizabeth, all of whom inspire me with their gifts and their commitment to their
own recreative art.
vi
Contents

Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations x
Note on the Text xi
Introduction: Androgynous Subjectivity and the Recreative 1
Coleridge Writing Wordsworth, Reading Wordsworth:
A Reappraisal 7
Spheres of Mutual Influence 9
Gender as Nexus: Reintegrating the Poetic and Epistemological 12
Reappraising Influence: Coleridge, Robinson, and Shelley 21
1 Coleridge’s Gendered Revolt against Materialism: Textual Plasticity
in “The Eolian Harp,” Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and
“Kubla Khan” 27
Dilation and Contraction in “The Eolian Harp” 30
Androgyny and Recreation in “Kubla Khan” 38
Subverting Moral Binaries: Biographia Literaria and Rime
of the Ancient Mariner 46
2 Coleridge and Robinson: “Sense Unchained” 57
Dismantling Gender Binaries: “The Maniac,” “Kubla Khan,” and
“To Coleridge” 60
The Conversation between Robinson and Coleridge in
Walsingham: Androgyny, Subjectivity, and the Perverse 68
Coleridge after Robinson: The Paradox of Mourning Fellowship
Founded on Nondualism 83
3 Secondary Imagination, Contamination, and
Androgyny: Rethinking Coleridgean Fragmentation from “Kubla
Khan” and Christabel to Magnum Opus 87
Christabel: Subverting Masculinist Subjectivity 89
Dejection’s Layering Fragments of Selfhood 99
viii Contents
Dismantling Dualistic Systems of Morality in Order to
Recreate: German Philosophy, Biographia Literaria, and the
“Positive Negation” of Magnum Opus 102
4 The Plague of Storytelling: Mary Shelley through the Lens of
Robinson and Coleridge 113
Undercutting Masculine Subjectivity: Walsingham
and Frankenstein 116
Contamination and the Subversion of the Moral
Tale: Frankenstein and Rime of the Ancient Mariner 121
Daughters, Fathers, and Recreated Mothers: Mathilda
and Christabel 128
Narrative Contamination and Gender in The Last Man: Plague as
“Queen of the World” 136
Coda 147
Selected Bibliography 149
Index 159
Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the many forms of support that helped me shape this book.
For the opportunity to hone this project at its earliest phase through a
research fellowship, I thank the University of Miami Center for Humanities.
Two conferences, the 2016 BSESC Conference at Oxford and the 2018
Coleridge Conference at Cambridge, were invaluable in allowing me to
present different phases of the project to colleagues in the field; for helping
provide financial support to attend these meetings and for time to write and
perform research, I am grateful to the University of Miami’s College of Arts and
Sciences and the Department of English. I thank Elizabeth Denlinger, curator
of the New York Public Library’s Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His
Circle, who provided both her expertise and access to original manuscripts
by Mary Robinson and Mary Shelley. For their scholarly insights, suggestions,
and encouragement I thank Grevel Lindop, Stephen Berendt, and Frederick
Burwick.
For meticulous editing and timely production, especially during the
Coronavirus pandemic, I thank everyone at Bloomsbury involved with the
project. I am grateful to the art department for using as the cover image the
painting from the Frankenstein series by my sister, Jane Freeman.
As always, I thank my students for providing fresh perspectives and
questions that have continued to motivate and challenge me.