Review by Choice Review
In this book, Townsend argues for "a pervasive 'Berkeleian' undercurrent in the major English Romantic canon" (p. 17), specifically, the poetry of Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley. In the opening chapter, Townsend offers what he calls "an original reading of Berkeley's work" (p. 9). He presents the centrality of spirit in Berkeley's ontology and his conception of nature as a divine visual language as key themes that connect Berkeley with the Romantic poets. Each of the remaining four chapters is devoted to one of the four poets. In Blake, Townsend sees Berkeley's influence in the poet's "spiritualized approach to material bodies" (p. 59). Townsend argues that Coleridge's interest in Berkeley's late work Siris (1744) deepened Coleridge's Platonism, and he shows that Berkeley's Alciphron (1732), the dialogue against freethinkers, informed Wordsworth's rejection of Godwinian "abstract reason." Finally, Shelley offers "an appropriation of Berkeley and Berkeleian nature that does away with the Christian notion of God altogether" in favor of "an original image of the spiritual universe, outside of religious doctrine" (p. 164). Townsend also considers Berkeley as a creative writer, "explicitly concerned with language and the form of writing." Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Michael John Latzer, Gannon University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
