Mémoire - Gillian XU

At the Heart of Romanticism: Blood Circulation in the Works of William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and Mary Shelley

Gillian XU

Tracing the intersection between literature, haematology, and circulation in William Blake's The Four Zoas and Jerusalem, Percy Bysshe Shelley's “Alastor” and “The Sensitive Plant,” John Keats’s “This Living Hand,” and Mary Shelley's The Last Man, I aim to diverge from previous explorations of blood imagery in literature, which have mainly considered this biological substance from religious, political, gothic, gendered, and familial angles. Blood often reflects a single individual or group's body, family, and history. Instead, I analyze how blood moves within and without the body, as well as across both space and time in the works of these Romantic writers in order to conceptualize an ecological form of blood that can be viewed as a connective force or medium and that ensures communication between human and nonhuman bodies.