The Possibilities of Society: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Sociological Viewpoint of English Romanticism (SUNY Series, The Margins of Literature)

This innovative book revises many standard assumptions in both literary and sociological fields. Approaching English Romanticism through sociological theory, Hewitt argues that Wordsworth and Coleridge tested hypotheses about social organization and (inter)action in their poetry. She analyzes their achievements in representative works and looks at ways in which Byron, Shelley, and Keats modified the older poets' endeavor. She also describes the context for "poetic" sociology within the intellectual systems of the poets' day, comparing it to the context in which "scientific" sociology was later institutionalized. Hewitt's work offers a timely reevaluation of the Romantic poets as socially engaged thinkers. Moreover, her reconstruction of a "poetic" sociology identifies an alternative field of knowledge that contemporary scholars might still explore.