Science and Poetry in 1790s Somerset: The Self-Experiment Narrative, the Aeriform Effusion, and the Greater Romantic Lyric

This article reads the so-called Greater Romantic lyric, or conversation poem, in the context of a culture of enquiry in 1790s Bristol. In this culture, I argue, poems and scientific experiments were complementary ways of exploring the mind/body/nature relationship--experiment narratives concerning the inhalation of newly-isolated gases, or airs. "The Aeolian Harp," "Frost at Midnight," "Kubla Khan," and "Tintern Abbey" were interventions in scientific, social, and political debate rather than idealizing escapes from it. Vital to their interventions was their pneumaticism, their effusive form and textualization of speech--means of registering the restoration of the social self to a healthy state.