Ep. 86 — Feelings Are Not Facts: Romanticism’s Reckoning

In this final chapter of our Romanticism series, we bring the velvet curtain down with a sharp, necessary reality check. After indulging in the beauty, the yearning, and the drama of Romanticism, it’s time to ask the uncomfortable questions: What happens when feelings become fact? When perception overrides truth? When self-expression becomes a substitute for self-governance?

In this episode, Allen Mowery unpacks the paradox at the heart of Romanticism and explores the cultural consequences of turning emotion into moral authority. From Oscar Wilde’s unexpected transformation to T.S. Eliot’s quiet call to humility, we examine the poets who pushed back — and what their work still demands of us today.

We don’t just critique Romanticism’s legacy; we wrestle with it. And in the process, we offer an alternative: a life rooted not in the whims of feeling, but in the enduring clarity of truth.

Topics Covered:

• Why feelings are not facts (even if they feel really, really factual)

• The paradox of Romanticism’s emotional revolution

• The dangers of moral relativism and cultural narcissism

• Poets who resisted the emotional freefall: Eliot, Auden, Herbert, and more

• The difference between being expressive and being whole

• A call to choose truth — especially when it’s uncomfortable

Featured Poets & Texts:

• T.S. Eliot – Four Quartets, Ash Wednesday

• W.H. Auden – September 1, 1939

• George Herbert – The Elixir

• Oscar Wilde – De Profundis

• Selections from Romantic-era and post-Romantic poets

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