Author： Pladek Brittany
Publisher： Routledge Ltd
ISSN： 1050-9585
Source： European Romantic Review, Vol.23, Iss.3, 2012-06, pp. : 403-413
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Abstract
Using the lens of Romantic-era medical ethics, this essay seeks to reconsider Wordsworth's much-debated “healing power.” I argue that Wordsworth, who initially sought to model his own medical poetics on nature's holistic vitality, found that “healing” in its absolute sense could not be achieved through art alone. Like Romantic doctors, who saw the imperfection of their medical knowledge mirrored in frequent therapeutic failure, the poet turned to alleviation as an alternative model for effective therapy. In so doing, Wordsworth and his medical contemporaries illustrated a possible ethical ramification of Romantic organicism and its related fragmentary aesthetic.
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