Cover

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgements

Note on texts

List of abbreviations

Introduction: Approaching the ‘Shelleyan sublime’

1 From religion to revolution, 1810–1813

IMAGINATION , RELIGION AND THE NATURAL SUBLIME

READING NATURE ‘RIGHTLY’: REVOLUTION AND THE NATURAL SUBLIME

RUIN, REVOLUTION AND THE SUBLIME

2 Cultivating the imagination, 1813–1815

THE ASSASSINS: QUIETISM OR REVOLUTION?

IMAGINATION, MORALITY AND THE ‘SCIENCE OF MIND’: 1815

3 Mont Blanc and the Alps, 1816

MONT BLANC: THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND

ROUSSEAU AND THE HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY

MONT BLANC: IMAGINATION, RELIGION AND REVOLUTION

4 Writing the revolution: Laon and Cythna, 1817

THE BEAU IDÉAL OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION?

EXPERIMENTING WITH THE ‘PUBLIC MIND’

‘THE LESSON THAT EXPERIENCE TEACHES NOW’

‘CLEANSING FIRE’?: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF POLITICS

5 ‘Choose reform or civil war’, 1818–1819

THE PROMETHEAN ‘REFORM’: REJECTING THE POLITICS OF DEFIANCE

RECALLING THE CURSE: THE RUINS OF ROME AND THE ‘RELIGION OF ETERNITY’

THE PROMETHEAN ‘CIVIL WAR’: DEMOGORGON AND VESUVIUS

Conclusion: ‘Good and the means of good’, 1822

Notes

Bibliography

Index