Secular Mysteries: Stanley Cavell and English Romanticism

281 Pages·2013·1.264 MB·English

by  Edward T. Duffy

Secular Mysteries: Stanley Cavell
and English Romanticism
ii
Secular Mysteries: Stanley Cavell
and English Romanticism
Edward T. Duffy
NEW YORK • LONDON • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2013
© Edward T. Duffy, 2013
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Duffy, Edward T.
Secular mysteries: Stanley Cavell and English romanticism/Edward T. Duffy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-2678-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4411-1718-2
(hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Cavell, Stanley, 1926- 2.
Literature–Philosophy. 3. Romanticism. I. Title.
B945.C274D84 2013
191–dc23
2012036725
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-1718-2
PB: 978-1-4411-2678-8
ePub: 978-1-4411-9536-4
ePDF: 978-1-4411-8647-8
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
What should we be without
The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,
These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken
In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.
Richard Wilbur, “Advice to a Prophet”
vi
for Barb
così m’hai dilatata mia fidanza
come ’l sol fa la rosa quando aperta
tanto divien quant’ ell’ ha di possanza
viii
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments x
1 Stanley Cavell’s Redemptive Reading: A Philosophical
Labor in Progress 1
2 Reading Romanticism 35
3 A Wordsworthian Calling of Thinking 85
4 Bursting from a Congregated Might of Vapors:
Desire, Expression and Motive in Shelley 117
5 “The Breath Whose Might I Have Invoked in Song”:
Epipsychidion and Adonais 133
6 Reviewing the Vision of The Triumph of Life 201
Notes 225
Bibliography 241
Index 247