Viewing life in strictly corporeal terms was abhorrent to Romantic sensibility. This program examines attempts by Romantic poets to transcend the physical world and expand the limits of human imagination—presaging 20th-century notions of the unconscious. Illustrating how the idea of transcendence effectively became the religion of Romanticism, the film reflects on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s opium-inspired composition of “Kubla Kahn,” Lord Byron’s defiance of social and sexual mores in pursuit of inner truth, John Keats’ worldly fragility and literary immortality, and Percy Shelley’s legendary incarnation, in death, as the ultimate Romantic symbol—a disembodied heart. Produced by the Open University. (60 minutes)