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2005-2006 Fellows

Joann Kleinneiur

Stanford University
Department of English

Joann Kleinneiur is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at Stanford. She studies eighteenth century British literature, focusing on poetry and the history of chemistry.  Her dissertation on the chemical revolution and poetic form extends her interests into Romantic poetry.  She studied chemistry and neuroscience, as well as English, at Duke University, where she received her B.A.

Project Summary

Kleinneiur’s dissertation, “Elements of Poetry: Chemistry and Poetics in Erasmus Darwin, Coleridge, Blake, and Shelley,” examines the way British poets in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century used the discoveries of the chemical revolution to experiment with poetics.  The poets in her study, Erasmus Darwin, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Shelley, all recognized the deep analogical connection chemistry shares with language.  The poets looked to chemistry as a model of activity and synthesis with a correspondence in nature that they sought in their poetry.