Literary Synthesis Essay

Of all the elusive, seductive concepts shared by the disciplines of literary studies, art, and psychology, genius is among the most scoffed at, the least understood. To hear, as I have heard, a literature professor say that he "doesn't believe in genius," as if millions of people haven't attained I.Q. scores in excess of 140, or as if anyone, if he or she only worked vigorously enough, could pen a single work comparable to The Canterbury Tales or Paradise Lost or The Rape of the Lock, is to know, with a certain queasiness, that the Romantic genius has been nonsensically demystified in our Postmodern moment (Jara n.pag.). Reviving the Romantic genius might seem like a conservative enterprise, but, by concentrating notional force on the unstandardized,
The auxiliary text, Wordsworth's "The Tables Turned," will provide a Romantic counterpoint: the (often destructive) ambition of Romantic genius is willed into submission by the affectation of a Romantic counterforce of mindfulness and sobriety. "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree": unmindful of consequence, the Romantic genius is not content to observe the world as it is, but imbues himself or herself with the authority to alter it in as self-gratifying a way as possible (NAEL 460). In 2016, this might look more benign--might, in fact, acquire a heroic luster--as artists are surveilled by their governments and intellectually gifted youth are increasingly ill-served by an educational system that forces them to self-educate and self-stimulate--to, in effect, create their own Xanadus (Finn
those caves of ice! / And all who heard should see them there, / And all should cry, Beware! Beware! / His flashing eyes, his floating hair! / Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, / For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise" (NAEL 460-61). The poem's narrator is speaking hypothetically, of course; he's imagining a grandiose scenario in which his fearsome ambition, self-willed social isolation, and vivid fantasy life are not only noticed by society, but matter to it, and even galvanize it into a controlling, hysterical response. In one of my favorite commentaries on this poem, Camille Paglia writes, "Even if the artist's achievements are eventually accepted, he is not. He remains a pariah, strange and uncouth. 'Beware! Beware!': society must expel him, since he is contaminated by genius" (83). Two other voices suddenly butt in: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's (always butting in, always welcome to), which asks, "What does it mean to fall in love with a writer?" and Agatha Christie's, which remarks, "It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize how much you love them" (Touching Feeling 117, GoodReads n.pag.). My affection for Paglia engorges itself on the endearing obtuseness of this reading. Society is not