ABSTRACT
The American Renaissance of the nineteenth century was arguably a continuation of Romanticism in the works of such seminal figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888). But the arc of Romanticism continues into the twentieth century in the work of Kathleen Raine (1908–2003), the British poet, scholar, and founder of Temenos, an international network of scholars, artists, filmmakers, musicians, and poets. By understanding Kathleen Raine and the different currents from which she drew, especially Platonism, we can come to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of Romanticism more broadly. Platonism, as reflected in the work of these poets and creators of culture, is a set of approaches to knowing that include an emphasis on direct intuitive individual knowledge of transcendence; on dialogue as an expression of and means to such knowledge; on nature as divine expression and as conducive to realising transcendent knowledge; and on a metaphysics that emphasises the originally unfallen or divine nature of man, as well as the possibility of recovering that original state. Raine’s work, very much in this current of thought, represents in effect a continuation of Romanticism into the late twentieth century.
