Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies Research Seminar
Professor Maximiliaan van Woudenberg (Sheridan Institute of Technology, Oakville (Toronto) & Clare Hall, Cambridge)
Networking Romanticism: The Anglo-German Networks of Samuel Taylor Coleridgeand Mary Shelley
The seminar explores the term ‘networking Romanticism’ as it refers to the complex historical reality of personal, political, print, manuscript, and social networks during the Romantic period that fostered cosmopolitan interchange of knowledge and information. Such decentralized networks were the conduits in creating new literary productions and importing knowledge. Customized by Romantic figures, these personal information circuits also obscured the original sources and influences of knowledge and literary works from the British public sphere.
The first part of the paper examines Coleridge’s studies at the University of Göttingen in 1799 as a case study of transnational intellectual history, focusing on Coleridge’s research methods and the innovative classified catalogue in use at the famous Göttingen library. The second part of the talk examines inspiration and influence on Mary Shelley’s composition of Frankenstein at the Villa Diodati in 1816.