The Theory of Inspiration: Composition as a Crisis of Subjectivity in Romantic and Post-Romantic Writing

The idea of inspiration as a unique state of mind is now treated as little more than an embarrassment, yet Shelley and other writers often present the process of composition as a state of subjective crisis and transformation. Timothy Clark's book is the first systematic analysis of their accounts and the theory of inspiration. This innovative book reassesses surprising readings of the theory of inspiration in Western poetics since the Enlightenment: the place of mass "enthusiasm" or crowd psychology in Romantic conceptions of inspiration; Hölderin's theory of calculable inspiration; H.D.'s transvaluation of Romantic aesthetics; and the decisive place of Surrealism in the emergence of anti-humanist notions of inspiration in the poetics of Blanchot, Celan, and Derrida.