Cambridge University Press The Truth about Romanticism: Pragmatism and Idealism in Keats, Shelley, Coleridge: 83 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 83)

How have our conceptions of truth been shaped by romantic literature? This question lies at the heart of this examination of the concept of truth both in romantic writing and in modern criticism. The romantic idea of truth has long been depicted as aesthetic, imaginative and ideal. Tim Milnes challenges this picture, demonstrating a pragmatic strain in the writing of Keats, Shelley and Coleridge in particular, that bears a close resemblance to the theories of modern pragmatist thinkers such as Donald Davidson and Jürgen Habermas. Romantic pragmatism, Milnes argues, was in turn influenced by recent developments within linguistic empiricism. This book will be of interest to readers of romantic literature, but also to philosophers, literary theorists, and intellectual historians. Review "This very original, timely and deftly-written study joins a conspicuous body of critical work on British romantic literature and pragmatics....an engaging and fascinating reading of three major poets of British Romanticism." -Annalisa Volpone, NBOL 19"“Clearly written, with a stimulating breadth of research and depth of scholarship, Milnes' work provides an important link between modern linguistic/pragmatic philosophy and romantic/empiricist poetics. Recognizing precedent study in “the discourse of communicative rationality,” Milnes cites often and judiciously Kathleen Wheeler, Paul Hamilton, and Angela Esterhammer as central to the “the pragmatic, future-directed accent of romantic literature” -William C. Horrell,Wordsworth Circle"This very original, timely and deftly-written study joins a conspicuous body of critical work on British romantic literature and pragmatics….Milnes' book offers an engaging and fascinating reading of three major poets of British Romanticism.” -Annalisa Volpone,NBOL-19 Book Description A study of the concept of 'truth' in romantic literature, placing important romantic writers within a tradition of 'radical empiricism'. About the Author Tim Milnes is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. From 1998 to 2001 he was British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at University College, Oxford. He has published articles on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jeremy Bentham, William Hazlitt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb, and is the author of Knowledge and Indifference in English Romantic Prose (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and William Wordsworth: The Prelude (Palgrave, 2009). He is also the co-editor, with Kerry Sinanan, of Romanticism, Sincerity, and Authenticity (Palgrave, 2010) and is a consulting editor for the journal Hazlitt Studies.