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Romantic Palingenesis, or History from the Ashes
Colbert, Benjamin
Colbert, Benjamin
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2017-05-17
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Palingenesis, or regeneration from decay, is variously invoked by eighteenth to early-nineteenth-century natural philosophy, psychology, mythography, and literature. Its currency derives from the Swiss-French scientist Charles Bonnet’s Palingénésie philosophique (1769), which conceives of natural history as repeated renewal after epochal catastrophes. Herder’s Über die seelenwanderung (1782) develops an idea of “natural palingenesis” as the internal “rebirth” of selfhood within memory despite physiological decay. Pierre-Simon Ballanche’s fragmentary magnum opus Essais de palingénésie sociale (1827-29) turned to political upheaval, locating the French Revolution within a process by which expiatory suffering gives birth to a new social order. Other writers looked back to alchemical experiments. Robert Southey reviewed these experiments in Omniana (1812) under the heading, “Spectral Flowers,” and still other writers explored the palingenetic properties of resurrected bodies and ghosts. In the light of this not altogether unified discourse, this paper will consider the more discontented, sceptical, at times satiric, strain within Shelley’s poetry, where beautiful idealisms of progressivist transformation do not entirely overcome the fact of death, decay, degeneration, and loss that is their substrata.
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Colbert, B. (2017). Romantic Palingenesis, or History from the Ashes. European Romantic Review, 28 (3), pp 369-378.
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Journal article
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en
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This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor and Francis in European Romantic Review on 17/05/2017, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10509585.2017.1314663
The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.
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1050-9585