Romantic Weather: The Climates of Coleridge and Baudelaire

by Arden Reed

Romantic Weather shows the tradition of learned meteorology to be an influential and enduring topic from the time of Aristotle. Assistant Professor of English, Arden Reed concentrates on Coleridge and Baudelaire as exemplary figures who stand at the chronological extremes of European romanticism. In their writing, the weather is more than a local motif or by means of this imagery they express various conceptions of imagination, poetics, epistemology, and language. He integrates close readings of scholars like Earl Wasserman, the thematic approach of the 'Geneva Critics,' and the deconstructive strategies of Jacques Derrida, which offer access to the vapors that characterize, Reed argues, the flux and reflux of the Romantic imagination.

366 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984