November 4, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum.

William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Shelley—to name a few—are all authors considered to have worked in the Romantic style. However, some literary scholars have connected Jane Austen, the Brontës, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Edgar Allen Poe to this artistic, spiritual, and intellectual movement. Not surprisingly, all of these authors are well represented within the Athenæum’s collection. This event is an opportunity to learn about the movement that influenced so many of our most beloved writers.

Though many of us admire the great works of Romantic poetry, music, and painting, the ideas of the Romantics may seem juvenile, sloppy, escapist, or even dangerous, and the very word “romantic” is often an insult. Michael Ferber will offer a brief defense of Romantic ideas and intuitions about nature, religion, politics, and the self. Romanticism is here to stay, and it’s not all bad.