SOURCE: Stauffer, Andrew M. “Godwin, Provocation, and the Plot of Anger.” Studies in Romanticism 39, no. 4 (winter 2000): 579-97.

In the following essay, Stauffer explores the concept of anger and its role in determining culpability in 1790s England, maintaining that Caleb Williams is an “anti-anger” novel.

I was angry with my friend I told my wrath my wrath did end I was angry with my foe I told it not my wrath did grow 

—Blake, “A Poison Tree”

William Blake's “A Poison Tree” suggests that acting upon anger puts an end to plot; whether we tell or wreak our wrath, its expression is antithetical to calculated narratives. As Philip Fisher says, anger is a fundamentally rash emotion precisely at odds with the “world of plots.”¹ On the other hand, the same poem presents the cultivation of angry passions as dependent upon the secret plotting of the speaker, whose hunger for...