Below the line: extinction, late style, late Romanticism

Abstract

In light of a recent surge of interest in the literature of extinction, critics have begun to revisit the concept of late style first theorised by Adorno. As they return lateness to critical circulation, they often anchor the concept in Romantic writing. In contrast to the small-r romantic interpretation of late work often favoured by such work, in which biography and affect predominate, the present article contends that late-Romantic writing actually resists personalised readings. Instead, late-Romantic texts seek to disarticulate a personalising perspective in imagining themselves posterior to an ending that is utterly irrecuperable. Moreover, while readings of texts instinct with late temporality have recently focused on themes of individual or global extinction, the article argues that such concerns should be acknowledged to interlock with, perhaps even figure forth, meditations on the waning of Romantic ideas and ideals from the 1820s forward. Tracing the ways in which late-Romantic writing constructs for itself a sense of periodicity by paradoxically noting its disintegration, the article offers brief readings of Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Byron, Hazlitt, and Trelawny.