Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation

Romanticism and enthusiasm might be taken as synonymous. Yet although the term enthusiasm was rehabilitated to an extent in the eighteenth century, in relation to poetry at least, it was still strongly associated with the infectious and unregulated passions of the crowd. This study looks at the way writers in the Romantic period, both canonical and popular, attempted to situate themselves in relation to enthusiasm, frequently craving the idea of its therapeutic power, but often also seeking to distinguish their writing from what many regarded as its destructive and pathological power.