Romantic Prophecy and the Resistance to Historicism

Book excerpt: Romantic writers invoked prophecy throughout their work. However, the failure of prophecy to materialize didn't deter them. Why then do Romantic writers repeatedly invoke prophecy when it never works? The answer to this question is at the heart of Romantic Prophecy and the Resistance to Historicism. In this remarkably erudite work, Christopher Bundock argues that the repeated failure of prophecy in Romantic thought is creative and enables a renewable potential for expression across disciplines. By focusing on new readings of canonical Romantic authors as well as their more obscure works, Bundock makes a bold intervention into major concepts such as Romantic imagination, historicity, and mediation. Romantic Prophecy and the Resistance to Historicism glides across Kant's Swedenborgian dreams to Mary Shelley's Last Man and reveals how Romanticism reinvents history by turning prophecy inside out.