‘A Possession for Eternity’ : Thomas De Quincey’s feeling for war

This chapter aims to suggest the deep classical history of Romantic feelings about war. It examines Thomas De Quincey’s feelings for war writing through his engagement with Thucydides. De Quincey drew on contemporary reception of Thucydides to set up and undermine contrasts between empirical, scientific, ordered, universal and detached history, and its converse: war writing which is subjective, rhetorical, disruptive, particular and overtly emotional. The complexity of the early modern reception of Thucydides is clear in method. The reception tradition could be understood as setting Thucydides the detached scientist against Thucydides the sublime, emotional artist. Thucydides was a name to conjure with in debates about historiographical form and style, the value of democracy and history, the connections between war and civilisation, and relationships between nations. De Quincey’s approach to anecdotes and cases responds to a complex Romantic era body of writing. Anecdote can be seen as a wayward genre, and it is often self-consciously digressive in De Quincey’s writings.