Sharon Ruston

The Medical Dangers of Literary Genius

This essay examines three key texts by William Buchan, Isaac D’Israeli, and Richard Robert Madden, which demonstrate the emergence of the newly conceived idea of literary genius in the Romantic period. It considers the role of a new genre, the “medical biography,” in the development of this phenomenon. While the mental precariousness of the Romantic genius has been much commented upon, this essay concentrates instead on the bodily or physical aspects of genius, which is itself figured as a disease. The study and writing involved in publication are viewed as stimulants that can be addictive, ruining the health and wellbeing of authors and even leading to their early deaths.

William Godwin and the Imagination

Towards the end of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft expresses her annoyance at the women who are taken in by the ‘fashionable deceptions’ of the animal magnetists (Works, V, 253).1 This instance of gullibility is dwelt upon because it particularly reveals the ‘folly which the ignorance of women generates’ (Works, V, 251). Her husband, William Godwin, had particular knowledge of these ‘priests of quackery’ as she called them (Works, V, 254). In 1785, he had translated from the French an important report that aimed once and for all to dispel the myth of animal magnetism.2 This chapter looks at the scientific knowledge that Godwin gained through undertaking this translation, through the medical lectures he attended, and from conversations with some of his close scientific and medical friends. This knowledge extended and added to his political ideas — ideas that are instrumental for later Romantic writers. For example, the idea that environment shapes individuals and that circumstances determine action can be seen as a feature of both scientific and political theory of this time. More specifically, Wollstonecraft and Godwin both concern themselves with the ways in which obedience to authority can be obtained through deceptive means. In addition, Godwin is particularly interested in ideas of sympathy between parts of the body as well as between individuals, in longevity, and in the possibility of immortality.

Humphry Davy and the Sublime

This chapter explores the poetry and the science of the chemist Hum phry Davy and his fascination with the sublime. In the work of Davy during and beyond the 1790s there is a special relationship between poetry and chemistry. When Coleridge asks ‘What is poetry?’ and ‘what is a poet?’ in his Biographia Literaria he uses a number of terms in his answer to this question that are to be found in contemporary chemistry and which may well be the result of his earlier connection with Davy (Biographia, VII; II, 15). Specifically, Coleridge uses the word ‘sublime’ as a verb in Biographia to describe the poetic imagination, making reference to the chemical process of sublimation. Chemical metaphors help Coleridge to define his understanding of poetry. His friend Humphry Davy, poet and chemist, similarly sees a connection, using the aesthetic category of the ‘sublime’ as an adjective to describe the discipline of chemistry itself. Davy appropriates the sublime for science in this period because of its association with grandeur, awe, power, and for the role played by the imagination, fear, and pleasure.

Mary Wollstonecraft and Nature

During the period of the composition of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft read and reviewed a number of works of natural history for the Analytical Review.1 Examining the remit of these works, and Wollstonecraft’s response to them, it is possible to see Vindication as offering a kind of natural history of woman. The books that Wollstonecraft read and reviewed compared ‘man’ to animals and plants, and men and women to each other; the authors felt qualified to discuss the ‘natural’ distinctions between men and women and consequently to advise women on what behaviour and conduct was ‘natural’ to them. From such texts, Wollstonecraft learned that natural knowledge could be put to political use and she follows this model in Vindication. She determines to prove that women should be regarded as part of the ‘human species’ rather than the ‘mere animals’ they seem to some (Works, V, 73, 76). This chapter explores the links between natural history and natural rights in this critical moment when the concept of what was ‘natural’ was debated.2 Wollstonecraft emerges as an astute reader of natural history texts, who challenges as well as utilizes natural knowledge for her own political ends.