With explosive interest in Romantic science and theories of mind and a renewed sense of the period’s porousness to the world, along with new developments in cognitive theory and research, Romantic studies scholars have been called to revisit and re-map the terrain laid out in the highly influential 1970 volume Romanticism and Consciousness. Romanticism and Consciousness, Revisited brings this shift in approach to Romantic “consciousness”—no longer the possession of a sole self but transactional, social, and entangled with the outside world—up to date.

This splendid collection returns to Harold Bloom’s Romanticism and Consciousness and revisits that 1970 collection’s field-defining questions about subjectivity and the modern self. Engaging scholarship on neuroscience, cognitive theory and philosophy of mind, Faflak, Sha, and their eminent contributors renew the concept of Romantic consciousness for the twenty-first century. -- Deidre Lynch, Harvard University
Romanticism and Consciousness, Revisited contains fascinating, readable essays that display the best of cognitive approaches in literary studies. It is suitable for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in Romanticism courses. While many scholars will want to own their own copy, it definitely belongs in every university library. -- Lisa Ann Robertson, University of South Dakota * Wordsworth Circle *
The greatest strengths of this volume come, firstly, from the subtle call to think carefully about how we make the move between the ethical and the epistemological, and secondly, from the implication that there may be Romantic romances, quest-like or otherwise, between mind and world, and between different parts of consciousness, that contemporary philosophies of mind are only just enabling us to understand. Romanticism and Consciousness, Revisited calls on the self-reflexive powers of literature to create genuine dialogues with philosophies of mind, rather than making the coherence of literary texts depend on deployments of philosophical thinking. -- Merrilees Roberts * Romantic Circles *

Richard C. Sha is Professor of Literature and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at American University in Washington, DC. He is the author of Imagination and Science in Romanticism (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018), which won the Jean-Pierre Barricelli Prize in 2018. In 2020, the National Endowment for the Humanities of the United States selected this book as one of twelve books in the humanities to fund for open access publication. His previous books include Perverse Romanticism (Johns Hopkins UP, 2008) and with Joel Faflak, Romanticism and the Emotions (Cambridge UP, 2016). Joel Faflak is Professor of English and Theory at the University of Western Ontario. He is author of Romantic Psychoanalysis: The Burden of the Mystery (SUNY, 2008), co-author (with Ross Woodman) of Revelation and Knowledge: The Psyche in Romanticism (U of Toronto Press, 2011), and editor or co-editor of numerous essay collections and anthologies, most recently Romanticism and the Emotions (Cambridge UP, 2016), with Richard C. Sha, and William Blake: Modernity and Disaster (U of Toronto Press, 2020), with Tilottama Rajan.