Boundaries, Limits, Taboos: Transgression in Romanticism

Romanticism - an era of rebellion, of overreachers revolting against previous generations' conventions of taste, style and morals. Romantics made transgression their badge of honour and prided themselves on the desecration of formerly canonised laws. The repercussions of these meaningful and consequential trespasses are explored in unique ways in their texts. Having gathered thirteen papers given at the 2019 joint conference of the German Society for English Romanticism (GER) and the International Association of Byron Societies (IABS) at the University of Vechta, this essay collection examines the extent to which boundaries were crossed, permeated and violated. The boundaries between Orient and Occident, humanity and the animal world, subject and object, fictional and factual and even life and death, all of which were contemplated by selected authors of English and German Romanticism, are of particular interest. List of Figures ............................................................................................................. vii Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... ix SWANTJE VAN MARK AND NORBERT LENNARTZ Transgression in Romanticism: Some Introductory Remarks ........................................ 1 RICHARD LANSDOWN Appetite and Deeds, War and the Will: Faustian Transgression in Byron's .................................... 9 DIEGO SAGLIA Of Flesh and Boundaries: Transgressing Gaps and Orifices in Romantic Orientalism ......................................... 25 MARVIN REIMANN Byron's : Dismantling the Boundaries between Orient and Occident through Romantic Irony ................................................ 41 SOPHIA MÖLLERS The Historian Turned Anatomist of the Soul: Tracing Transgressive Psychology in William Godwin's .......................... 59 ALEXANDRA BÖHM Transgressive Encounters: Sympathy with Animals in John Aikin and Anna Laetitia Barbauld's and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" ................................ 71 IAN DUNCAN Imps of the Perverse: Romantic Fiction and Antinomian Denial ................................. 91 ALEXANDER SCHLUTZ "A poor, imprisoned animal." Persons, Property, and the Unnatural Nature of the Law in E.T.A. Hoffmann's .................... 103 SEBASTIAN DOMSCH Transgressing (Story)Worlds: Polidori, Byron, and ............................. 115 JONATHAN GROSS "No for as ": William Beckford in the Margins of Robert Southey's and Lord Byron's Visions of Judgement .................................... 125 DENISE GIGANTE Transgressing the Sacred Frontier of Culture ............................................................. 147 RICHARD C. SHA Can Transgression Be Meaningful Even After It Is Required or Expected? .............. 165 NICHOLAS ROE Transgressive Biography ........................................................................................... 183 KASAHARA YORIMICHI Croly's Dying Warrior: The Roman Gladiator That Crossed the Boundary and Turned into Arminius .......... 199 List of Contributors .................................................................................................... 213