Critical Essay | Critical Essay by M. G. Cooke

Critical Essay by M. G. Cooke

SOURCE: "The Fatal Bounds of the Will," in The Blind Man Traces the Circle: On the Patterns and Philosophy of Byron's Poetry, Princeton University Press, 1969, pp. 61-90.

In the excerpt below, Cooke analyzes the nature of the self and the strength of individual will as they are presented in Byron's dramatic poem Manfred.

Critical theorists celebrate as one of the outstanding marks of romanticism the realization that the seat of value is in the self, and the obligation of the self the apprehension of its home beyond brute circumstances of time and place; its "heart and home," as Wordsworth declares, "is with infinitude." A decisive shift in orientation takes place here. For where traditional Christianity had promised redemption of the individual from eternal wretchedness by a briefly incarnate Christ, Agent of Infinitude, romanticism is seen propounding a redemption of infinitude from entrenched materialism by the self, Bearer of Infinitude—so...
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