The laboratory of poetry. Chemistry and Poetics in the Work of Fr

Begining to light unexpected encounter between the natural sciences and the theory of poetry at the end of the eighteenth century, this book argues that some of romanticism´s most daring and induring innovations owe their form and substance to the subject of chemistry. By focusing on the work of Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), The Laboratory of Poetry demostrates the degree to wich romantic poetics, in its language and concepts, relies on the chemistry of its day. This argument revises our very understanding of the period, for rather than taking romanticism to assume a hostile stance toward science, we can now see how it works to embrace fundamental scientific concepts (for example, the experiment, the element, and the combinatorial method).