This session, titled “Romantic Disillusionment,” investigates the complex interplay between the loss of ideals and the subsequent reconstruction of meaning within Romantic literature and its critical reception. Rather than treating disillusionment as a simple end point or a narrative of failure, this session treats it as a generative, structural force. It explores how the movement from enchantment to disenchantment—and often back again—shapes poetics, historical memory, and social theory.

Rationale and Scholarly Context

The rationale for this session lies in the need to complicate the traditional "illusion/disillusion" binary that has long defined Romantic studies. For decades, scholarship has often framed Romanticism as a movement of youthful radicalism that inevitably soured into conservative "disillusionment" (the "lost leader" narrative).

This session engages with and challenges existing scholarship by moving beyond these linear progressions. It draws on diverse theoretical frameworks—from Adorno’s "processing the past" to Marxist critiques of commodity fetishism and the "ideology of improvement"—to argue that disillusionment is not merely a reaction to failed politics or personal loss. Instead, it is a tool used by poets and critics alike to rewrite history, re-evaluate experience, and discover new modes of "re-enchantment" within a seemingly disenchanted world.

The Presentations

1. “On the Concept of Disillusionment” – Claudia Brodsky opens the session by interrogating the very definition of the term. She argues that disillusionment is not just a secondary reaction to a primary "illusion" but a retrospective act that rewrites the past. By examining Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads alongside Shelley and Keats, Kant and Adorno, Brodsky suggests that the "downward course" from poetic hope to prosaic realism is less a failure and more a complex way of questioning the neat divisions between past, present, and "lived experience."
2. “Narrating Annette Vallon, Re-Enchanting Wordsworth” – Christopher Rovee shifts the focus to the history of scholarship itself. He explores how the early 20th-century revelation of Wordsworth’s secret French mistress and illegitimate daughter caused a "disillusioning" shock to the academic community. However, Rovee argues that scholars used this scandal to "re-enchant" the poet, transforming him from a stale Victorian moralist into a "modern," psychologically complex figure. This presentation demonstrates how biographical disillusionment can be leveraged to renew a poet's cultural relevance.
3. “The Fifteen Keatsian Autumns of John Clare” – Nathan TeBokkel examines the intertextual relationship between John Clare and John Keats. Focusing on Clare’s repeated returns to the Keatsian theme of autumn, TeBokkel argues that Clare uses "Romantic citation" to process his own profound losses—of home, peers, and lifestyle. Rather than a final overturning of enchantment, Clare’s work suggests that disenchantment is a matter of attention. By listening for the "under-notes" of the natural world, Clare finds a resilient, beautiful mode of surviving within a capitalist, "enchanted" reality.
4. “Disappointment and Improvement in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters” – Hannah Piette concludes the session by exploring the sociopolitical dimensions of disappointment in Mary Wollstonecraft’s travel writing. Wollstonecraft often felt "disillusioned" when observing poor populations who failed to meet her Enlightenment standards of "improvement." Piette argues that for Wollstonecraft, becoming truly human requires rising above the "brute" disappointments of reality. Yet she also shows how Wollstonecraft finds "re-enchantment" through aesthetic flight—escaping the disappointing physical ground for the "magic island" of the imagination.

Diversity of Voices

The panel incorporates a healthy diversity of academic perspectives and career stages, bringing together established scholars from Ivy League institutions with voices from major state universities and international representation from Canada. The selection of topics ensures a breadth of "voices" from the Romantic period itself—ranging from the canonical (Wordsworth, Keats, Wollstonecraft) to the laboring-class perspectives of John Clare—while spanning diverse genres including lyric poetry, literary theory, and travelogues.

Time Management

Each presenter will be notified in advance that they are allowed a maximum of 13 minutes for their presentation, including any introductory remarks. The Presider (Amelia Worsley) is a seasoned MLA panel discussion leader who will rigorously, yet collegially enforce these expectations. Accordingly, we are very confident that the session will operate within the allotted timeframe while allowing for at least 15 minutes of unstructured discussion.