Author: David Simpson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226759466
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
Why has Anglo-American culture for so long regarded "theory" with intense suspicion? In this important contribution to the history of critical theory, David Simpson argues that a nationalist myth underlies contemporary attacks on theory. Theory's antagonists, Simpson shows, invoke the same criteria of common sense and national solidarity as did the British intellectuals who rebelled against "theory" and "method" during the French Revolution. Simpson demonstrates the close association between "theory" and "method" and shows that by the mid-eighteenth century, "method" had acquired distinctly subversive associations in England. Attributed increasingly to the French and the Germans, "method" paradoxically evoked images both of inhuman rationality and unbridled sentimentality; in either incarnation, it was seen as a threat to what was claimed to be authentically British. Simpson develops these paradigms in relation to feminism, the gendering of Anglo-American culture, and the emergence of literature and literary criticism as antitheoretical discourses. He then looks at the Romantic poets' response to this confining ideology of the cultural role of literature. Finally, Simpson considers postmodern theory's claims for the radical energy of nonrational or antirationalist positions. This is an essential book not only for students of the Romantic period and intellectual historians concerned with the idea of "method," but for anyone interested in the historical background of today's debates over the excesses and possibilities of "theory."
Author: Michael Gardiner
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1780931107
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. In this extended essay, Michael Gardiner examines the ideology of the discipline of English Literature in the light of the serious redefining work on England and Englishness that has been conducted in Political Studies in the last decade. He argues that English Literature emerges from the development of the state and that consequently it has suppressed the idea of the nation. His claim is that English Literature has lost its form since its methodology and canonicity depended so heavily on a constitutional form which can no longer be defended. He calls upon those working in English Literature to recognise that they are not really participating in the same discipline, defined by the Burkean constitutional settlement, even if they think of themselves as writing 'within the canon'. His view is that a lack of appreciation of 'hard-edged' political factors have led to a 'continuant' and regressive form of English Literature which tends to hang on to stifling methodologies. In its place, he appeals for the creation of a more open-ended, inclusive, internationalist, and comparative 'literature of England'.
Author: Leon Chai
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801889464
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
Winner of the Jean-Pierre Barricelli Prize given by the International Conference on Romanticism This original study explores the new idea of theory that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution. Leon Chai sees in the Romantic age a significant movement across several broad fields of intellectual endeavor, from theoretical concepts to an attempt to understand how they arise. He contends that this movement led to a spatial treatment of concepts, the primacy of development over concepts, and the creation of metatheory, or the formal analysis of theory. Chai begins with P. B. Shelley on the need for conceptual framework, or theory. He then considers how Friedrich Wolf and Friedrich Schlegel shift from a preoccupation with antiquity to a heightened self-awareness of Romantic nostalgia for that lost past. He finds a similar reflexivity in Napoleon's battle plan at Jena and, subsequently, in Hegel's move from substance to subject. Chai then turns to the sciences: Xavier Bichat's rejection of the idea of a unitary vital principle for life as process; the chemical theory of matter developed by Humphry Davy; and the work of Évariste Galois, whose proof of the solvability of equations using radicals ushered in the age of metatheory. Chai concludes with reactions to theory: Coleridge's proposal of the conflict between reason and understanding as a model of theory, Mary Shelley's effort to replace theory with a different kind of relationship to external others, and Hölderlin's reflection on the limits of representation and the possibility of fulfillment beyond it.
Author: David Aram Kaiser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139425773
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 173
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Book Description
This ambitious study, first published in 1999, argues that our conception of the aesthetic sphere emerged during the era of British and German Romanticism from conflicts between competing models of the liberal state and the cultural nation. The aesthetic sphere is thus centrally connected to 'aesthetic statism', which is the theoretical project of reconciling conflicts in the political sphere by appealing to the unity of the symbol. David Kaiser traces the trajectory of aesthetic statism from Schiller and Coleridge, through Arnold, Mill and Ruskin, to Adorno and Habermas. He analyses how the concept of aesthetic autonomy shifts from being a supplement to the political sphere to an end in itself; this shift lies behind the problems that contemporary literary theory has faced in its attempts to connect the aesthetic and political spheres. Finally, he suggests that we rethink the aesthetic sphere in order to regain that connection.
Author: Fiona Price
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317063309
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
How and to what extent did women writers shape and inform the aesthetics of Romanticism? Were undervalued genres such as the romance, gothic fiction, the tale, and the sentimental and philosophical novel part of a revolution leading to newer, more democratic models of taste? Fiona Price takes up these important questions in her wide-ranging study of women's prose writing during an extended Romantic period. While she offers a re-evaluation of major women writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Ann Radcliffe and Charlotte Smith, Price also places emphasis on less well-known figures, including Joanna Baillie, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Hamilton and Priscilla Wakefield. The revolution in taste occasioned by their writing, she argues, was not only aesthetic but, following in the wake of British debates on the French Revolution, politically charged. Her book departs from previous studies of aesthetics that emphasize the differences between male and female writers or focus on higher status literary forms such as the treatise. In demonstrating that women writers' discussion of taste can be understood as an intervention at the most fundamental level of political involvement, Price advances our understanding of Romantic aesthetics.
Author: George Alexander Kennedy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521300100
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 532
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Book Description
The history of the most hotly debated areas of literary theory, including structuralism and deconstruction.
Author: Balázs Trencsényi
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155211248
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 502
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Book Description
67 texts, including hymns, manifestos, articles or extracts from lengthy studies exemplify the relation between Romanticism and the national movements in the cultural space ranging from Poland to the Ottoman Empire. Each text is accompanied by a presentation of the author, and by an analysis of the context in which the respective work was born.The end of the 18th century and first decades of the 19th were in many respects a watershed period in European history. The ideas of the Enlightenment and the dramatic convulsions of the French Revolution had shattered the old bonds and cast doubt upon the established moral and social norms of the old corporate society. In culture a new trend, Romanticism, was successfully asserting itself against Classicism and provided a new key for a growing number of activists to 're-imagine' their national community, reaching beyond the traditional frameworks of identification (such as the 'political nation', regional patriotism, or Christian universalism). The collection focuses on the interplay of Romantic cultural discourses and the shaping of national ideology throughout the 19th century, tracing the patterns of cultural transfer with Western Europe as well as the mimetic competition of national ideologies within the region.
Author: Charles Mahoney
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444390643
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 634
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Book Description
Through a series of 34 essays by leading and emerging scholars, A Companion to Romantic Poetry reveals the rich diversity of Romantic poetry and shows why it continues to hold such a vital and indispensable place in the history of English literature. Breaking free from the boundaries of the traditionally-studied authors, the collection takes a revitalized approach to the field and brings together some of the most exciting work being done at the present time Emphasizes poetic form and technique rather than a biographical approach Features essays on production and distribution and the different schools and movements of Romantic Poetry Introduces contemporary contexts and perspectives, as well as the issues and debates that continue to drive scholarship in the field Presents the most comprehensive and compelling collection of essays on British Romantic poetry currently available
Author: Tonya J. Moutray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317069315
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
In eighteenth-century literature, negative representations of Catholic nuns and convents were pervasive. Yet, during the politico-religious crises initiated by the French Revolution, a striking literary shift took place as British writers championed the cause of nuns, lauded their socially relevant work, and addressed the attraction of the convent for British women. Interactions with Catholic religious, including priests and nuns, Tonya J Moutray argues, motivated writers, including Hester Thrale Piozzi, Helen Maria Williams, and Charlotte Smith, to revaluate the historical and contemporary utility of religious refugees. Beyond an analysis of literary texts, Moutray's study also examines nuns’ personal and collective narratives, as well as news coverage of their arrival to England, enabling a nuanced investigation of a range of issues, including nuns' displacement and imprisonment in France, their rhetorical and practical strategies to resist authorities, representations of refugee migration to and resettlement in England, relationships with benefactors and locals, and the legal status of "English" nuns and convents in England, including their work in recruitment and education. Moutray shows how writers and the media negotiated the multivalent figure of the nun during the 1790s, shaping British perceptions of nuns and convents during a time critical to their survival.
Author: Diego Saglia
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108426417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
Sheds new light on the presence and impact of Continental European literary traditions in post-Napoleonic Britain.
