Romantic Organicism

CHARLES I. ARMSTRONG is Associate Professor at the English Department of the University of Bergen, Norway, and has been a visiting scholar at Wolfson College, Cambridge

Romantic Organicism attempts to reassess the much maligned and misunderstood notion of organic unity. Armstrong shows how the tenets and ideals of organicism - despite much criticism - remain an insistent, if ambivalent, backdrop for much of our current thought, including the work of Derrida amongst others.Romantic Organicism attempts to reassess the much maligned and misunderstood notion of organic unity. Following organicism from its crucial radicalisation in German Idealism, it shows how both Coleridge and Wordsworth developed some of their most profound ideas and poetry on its basis. Armstrong shows how the tenets and ideals of organicism - despite much criticism - remain an insistent, if ambivalent, backdrop for much of our current thought, including the work of Derrida amongst others.