AustLit

'Late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century literary and artistic conceptions may seem far removed from the complex, global materialism that characterises contemporary culture, yet many ideas associated with historical Romanticism continue to influence the study and practice of creative writing throughout the world. This is partly because of the power and diversity of the Romantic legacy – so many fine writers are associated with Romanticism – and partly because Romanticism continues to inform the contemporary zeitgeist in a variety of complex ways. J.M. Fitzgerald contends that one of Romanticism’s best known works, William Wordsworth’s The Prelude ushered in the idea ‘that each individual constructs themselves … and that each individual’s story is his or her own unique[ly]’ (2002: 101). This fundamental and far-reaching idea of the (more-or-less) separate self remains with us, however much it may have been reinflected by postmodernity.' (Editorial introduction)