pt. 1. Romantic irony The paradigm of romantic irony -- Byron: "Half dust, half deity" -- Keats and the vale of soul-making -- Carlyle's Sartor Resartus: a self-consuming artifact -- pt. 2. The perimeters of romantic irony Guilt and Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- Fear and trembling: from Lewis Carroll to existentialism -- A conclusion in which nothing is concluded