In The Ethics of Romanticism Laurence Lockridge vigorously revives ethical criticism and at the same time brings to light the Romantics' profound engagement with ethical questions. He argues that a will to value is the pervasive motive of Romantic writers from Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and De Quincey to Shelley, Hazlitt, Keats and Byron. They articulate a compelling ethics that has had a significant influence on modern thought. Yet its character has never before been systematically explored within the larger contexts of European thought. Lockridge argues that a focus on the ethical...