"Genial" Perception: Wordsworth, Coleridge and the Myth of Genius in the Long Eighteenth Century

Genial Perception offers a critical examination of Wordsworth's and Coleridge's naturalist construction of creative and critical perception, and a historical study of the perceptual dimension of poetic taste. "Genial" is the adjectival form of "genius," and eighteenth-century critical naturalism understands "genial" perception as a gift of nature, as an inborn power operating autonomously through the senses and imagination and thus independently of cultural influence.

By exploring the philol...