The Spiritual History of Ice
At the end of the eighteenth century, scientists for the first time demonstrated what medieval and renaissance alchemists had long suspected; ice is not lifeless but vital, a crystalline revelation of vigorous powers. Studied in esoteric and exoterical representations of frozen phenomena, several Romantic figures - including Coleridge and Poe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emerson and Thoreau - challenged traditional notions of ice as waste and instead celebrated crystals, glaciers, and the poles as special disclosures of a holistic principle of being. The Spiritual History of Ice explores this ecology of frozen shapes in fascinating detail, revealing not only a neglected current of the Romantic age but also a secret history and psychology of ice.
| Autor: | Wilson, E. |
|---|---|
| ISBN: | 9780230619715 |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Seitenzahl: | 278 |
| Produktart: | Kartoniert / Broschiert |
| Verlag: | Palgrave Macmillan US |
| Veröffentlicht: | 17.11.2009 |
| Untertitel: | Romanticism, Science and the Imagination |
| Schlagworte: | British and Irish Literature Coleridge Middle Ages Percy Bysshe Shelley Renaissance Romanticism Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
ERIC WILSON is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University, where he teaches courses in British and American Romanticism. He is author of Romantic Turbulence and Emerson's Sublime Science .