SOURCE: Brantley, Richard E. “An Orientation.” In Locke, Wesley, and the Method of English Romanticism, pp. 1-26. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1984.

In the following essay, Brantley proposes that John Locke's An Essay concerning Human Understanding was central in forming Wesley's methodology and that Wesley's model of experience was vital to and pervasive in British romanticism.

Probably when our unified field theory of British Romanticism finally arrives, the materials will be somewhat nearer at hand than either the distant past of Milton or the far future of Joyce. … Thinking about British Romanticism primarily in connection with the eighteenth century may not taste quite so sublime to our intellectual palates; but perhaps our taste has become a bit depraved.¹

No matter how direct the attempt at revival, the near influence is always telling. For example, Hollywood's conception of Imperial Rome fluctuates according to “modern” rather than Roman styles of...