Romantic consciousness

Romantic Consciousness: In the first of two studies, now in paperback, with a new Preface by the author and a new Foreword by the author AS Byatt, John Beer traces the Romantic perception that rational consciousness could not adequately represent all that was implicit in the human psyche, and the consequent invocation of a human sense of 'Being' - related either to the Divine Being or to a universal spirit - as supplement.

Although an intuition of the kind can be traced in Blake, the writer most responsible for articulating and developing it was Coleridge, whose interest in psychology and earlier, more pantheistic, speculations provided a powerful stimulus to Wordsworth's ideas concerning Nature.

The impact of Blake's, Coleridge's and Wordsworth's ideas passed to their successors, Keats and De Quincey, each strongly drawn by their encounters with Coleridge's psychological discourse into speculations of their own concerning the existential significance of their own mental experiences; and to Byron and the Shelleys who each developed their own emphases, and less religious sense of 'Being'. Relevance to later figures such as the Cambridge Apostles, who included the word as part of their private, semi-mystical vocabulary, and to Tennyson is also discussed.

Post-Romantic Consciousness: Post-Romantic Consciousness, in paperback for the first time, with new Preface by the author and a new Foreword by AS Byatt, follows on from Beer's study, Romantic Consciousness, discussing further questionings of human consciousness.

As Darwinism gained ground, undermining Romantic modes of thought, questions concerning human consciousness remained.

In Dickens, for example, the struggle between a consciously affectionate and benevolent view of the world and an unconscious attraction to the criminal and violent probably led eventually to his failure to complete his last novel.

Similar contradictions produced the Society for Psychical Research, where it was hoped that scientific investigation of abnormal psychical experiences might produce further insights into human nature.

F.W.H. Myers's postulation of a 'subliminal self' in all human beings suggested one solution, while William James and European thinkers such as Heidegger, Sartre and Havel explored further conceptions of Being. Romantic influence persisted, however: Virginia Woolf, with her 'moments of Being', and Lawrence's insistence on another level of consciousness in human beings were followed in time by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, demonstrating a dialectic between her multifarious 'modern' consciousness and his rooted, physical sense of Being.