Parables of Disfiguration: Reason and Excess from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde

Parables of Disfiguration examines literary and cinematic texts from the Romantic period forward, offering fresh perspectives on the vicissitudes of reason and excess – seen as moments leading to a seizure by sophia (wisdom). Reading canonical works by Percy Bysshe Shelley, but also less familiar poems such as The Revolt of Islam, Robert Eisenhauer draws attention to a series of transits involving the operation of chance and the playful distortions of the scholarly anagram. Hart Cr…