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  • Chapter 3 - Irish Literary Theory: From Politeness to Politics

  • from Part II - Transitions
  • Edited by Claire Connolly, University College Cork
  • Book:
    Irish Literature in Transition, 1780–1830
    Published online:
    28 February 2020
    Print publication:
    12 March 2020, pp 69-84

  • Summary

    This chapter explores romantic-era interest in the philosophy of mind, particularly in vitalism-influenced work by contributors to the Polite Literature section of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy: Robert Burrowes, William Preston, and Richard Stack. A medical theory that emerged in the mid-1700s, vitalism is concerned with bodily operations that are neither volitional nor recognisably mechanical – ‘involuntary motions’, as Robert Whytt termed them, such as breathing, reflexes (including ticklishness), and the pulse. Vitalism spoke to that which was outside conscious regulation, including reactions to stimuli, and so resonated with interests from the creative process and aesthetic response to public order. For the writers considered here, agency consists in the effort, supported by education and social networks, to manage an experience persistently complicated by involuntary impulses and external forces.