ABSTRACT
David Wellbery analyzes the Romantic myth of interiority as arising out of a suppression of the exterior technical means that make the supposedly “inner voice” possible. Wellbery maintains that the Romantic myth of “the absolutization of voice” introduces personality as a revolutionary novum into the world, but he is ignoring its anticipation by the dolce stil novo and numerous other poetic sequels. The new poetry is a remote source of Romantic as opposed to classical values, and it pivots on self-reflection. Dante conceives of human rationality as diversifying singular individuals: “and reason itself, whether in discernment or in judgment or in willing, is diversified in individuals”. The divine revelation, in principle, is of an ineffable Other, but in practice it is apprehended self-reflexively. Julia Kristeva and Frederick Goldin have both insisted on the narcissistic structure of self-reflection as constitutive of the modern subject that originates in the birthing of the modern lyric.
