This dissertation traces British Romantic literature's deep moral investment in the unjustifi... more This dissertation traces British Romantic literature's deep moral investment in the unjustified or aimless idea. That investment materializes as conjecture, which offers a means of expressing an idea without yet making a claim for what the idea ultimately signifies. Conjecture, therefore, is the form that thought takes when it aims beyond what it knows that it can presently justify as content.The project traces conjecture from the Enlightenment texts of Adam Smith, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant to the poems, novels and plays of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, and Mary and Percy Shelley. In these writers, conjecture unsettles narratives whose outcomes had seemed fixed and worlds that had appeared closed. As a narrative mode, conjecture acts as a placeholder for thoughts that have not yet found their final guiding idea or their final frame of reference. In some cases, conjecture takes the form of an unresolved question: narrators and characters are left gesturing at the place where an answer should go, but without thereby claiming to actually have found an answer. In other cases, conjecture takes the reverse form: the answer is there, but without the question that would make the answer meaningful. The idea lacks its frame of reference. In either case, an idea persists in the subject's mind even when it is not yet—or is no longer—a live possibility for him or her.The idealism in conjecture looks like simply being out of touch with reality. Kant, for example, talks about "the peevish wish … one that nothing satisfies." Peevishness is usually considered a disengagement from others—something merely contrarian. However, one can appear contrarian precisely because one hasn't disengaged from others; because one hasn't silenced oneself. Conjecture keeps its thought alive in the faith that the idea does matter and that it does merit engagement, even when one can't yet explain why.In conjectural literature, thoughts that feel idle, provisional, or incomplete turn out [...]
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Percy Shelley’s The Cenci, two women stand trial on murder cha... more In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Percy Shelley’s The Cenci, two women stand trial on murder charges whose outcome seems settled against them from the outset. But the criminal conviction of Justine Moritz and Beatrice Cenci proves secondary to a far less settled sense of personal conviction that persists in the face of circumstance. Despite the judgment of the courts, Victor Frankenstein maintains his belief in Justine’s innocence, while Beatrice Cenci holds onto her belief in her own moral innocence over and above the fact of her legal guilt. In their refusal to justify these convictions to others, moreover, Victor and Beatrice hold out for an idea of justice that cannot yet be communicated to others or fully represented to oneself. Conviction, as the Shelleys imagine it in these texts, holds open space for intuitions that might still prove morally consequential but whose final, redeemed form has not yet arrived.
This dissertation traces British Romantic literature's deep moral investment in the unjustifi... more This dissertation traces British Romantic literature's deep moral investment in the unjustified or aimless idea. That investment materializes as conjecture, which offers a means of expressing an idea without yet making a claim for what the idea ultimately signifies. Conjecture, therefore, is the form that thought takes when it aims beyond what it knows that it can presently justify as content.The project traces conjecture from the Enlightenment texts of Adam Smith, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant to the poems, novels and plays of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, and Mary and Percy Shelley. In these writers, conjecture unsettles narratives whose outcomes had seemed fixed and worlds that had appeared closed. As a narrative mode, conjecture acts as a placeholder for thoughts that have not yet found their final guiding idea or their final frame of reference. In some cases, conjecture takes the form of an unresolved question: narrators and characters are left gesturing at the place where an answer should go, but without thereby claiming to actually have found an answer. In other cases, conjecture takes the reverse form: the answer is there, but without the question that would make the answer meaningful. The idea lacks its frame of reference. In either case, an idea persists in the subject's mind even when it is not yet—or is no longer—a live possibility for him or her.The idealism in conjecture looks like simply being out of touch with reality. Kant, for example, talks about "the peevish wish … one that nothing satisfies." Peevishness is usually considered a disengagement from others—something merely contrarian. However, one can appear contrarian precisely because one hasn't disengaged from others; because one hasn't silenced oneself. Conjecture keeps its thought alive in the faith that the idea does matter and that it does merit engagement, even when one can't yet explain why.In conjectural literature, thoughts that feel idle, provisional, or incomplete turn out [...]
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Percy Shelley’s The Cenci, two women stand trial on murder cha... more In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Percy Shelley’s The Cenci, two women stand trial on murder charges whose outcome seems settled against them from the outset. But the criminal conviction of Justine Moritz and Beatrice Cenci proves secondary to a far less settled sense of personal conviction that persists in the face of circumstance. Despite the judgment of the courts, Victor Frankenstein maintains his belief in Justine’s innocence, while Beatrice Cenci holds onto her belief in her own moral innocence over and above the fact of her legal guilt. In their refusal to justify these convictions to others, moreover, Victor and Beatrice hold out for an idea of justice that cannot yet be communicated to others or fully represented to oneself. Conviction, as the Shelleys imagine it in these texts, holds open space for intuitions that might still prove morally consequential but whose final, redeemed form has not yet arrived.
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