Contretemps: Of Extinction and Romanticism.

This essay considers how extinction functions as a concept within romantic studies and as an inhuman dynamic inscribed in the concept of Romanticism itself. Beginning with an essay on Paul de Man and moving to analyses of Wordsworth and Clare alongside contemporary work by Dipesh Chakrabarty, it argues for the necessity of rethinking evolution and life in the context of the Anthropocene. How would romantic thought change once one thinks of lives that are not reducibly human? And what would be the status of such poetry? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]