Description
The Romantics lived through a turn of the century that, like our own, seemed to mark an end to history as it had long been understood. They faced accelerated change, including unprecedented state power, armies capable of mass destruction, a polyglot imperial system, and a market economy driven by speculation. In Romanticism at the End of History, Jerome Christensen challenges the prevailing belief that the Romantics were reluctant to respond to social injustice. Through provocative and searching readings of the poetry of Wordsworth; the poems, criticism, and journalism of Coleridge; the Confessions of De Quincey; and Sir Walter Scott's Waverley, Christensen concludes that during complicated times of war and revolution English Romantic writers were forced to redefine their role as artists.
The most brilliant, comprehensive, and humanizing discussion of Romanticism I've encountered in a long time: criticism that unabashedly loves its subject. -- Frank McConnell, University of California, Santa Barbara
About the Author
Jerome Christensen is chair of the English Department at the Univeristy of California, Irvine. He is also the author of Lord Byron's Strength: Romantic Writing and Commercial Society, also available from Johns Hopkins.
Reviews
Romanticism at the End of History is a book of remarkable wit, verve, and imagination... Frequently spellbinding and often wonderfully suggestive. -- Hugh Roberts European Romantic Review Jerome Christensen, sometime pupil of M. H. Abrams but assiduously conversant in all serious emergent critical idioms, has written a brilliant book as timely and intellectually demanding as one would expect. -- Paul Hamilton British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin and Review How, asks Christensen, can one resist commercialist hegemony in the posthistorical world?... This book bravely and passionately asserts the contemporary relevance of the utopian impulse in 'Romantic' writing without falling prey to its ideological posturing. -- Michael John Kooy Modern Language Review [Christensen's] formulation of the Romantics is fascinating, bound up with the future of poetry as well as the way in which we should think about their historical significance. This element of the study is tied to Christensen's stirring concern with the uses to which Romantic texts and Romantic thinking can be put in the twenty-first-century university environment. This Year's Work in English Studies Romanticism at the End of History provides a refreshingly new discussion of Romanticism that focuses on the use of Romantic texts and Romantic ideas instead of on their critique... His fresh take on the 'color of imagination' provides new insights into the connection between the lives and works of Wordsworth and Coleridge. -- Kandi Tayebi Rocky Mountain Review
Book Information
ISBN 9780801879036
Author Jerome Christensen
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
The most brilliant, comprehensive, and humanizing discussion of Romanticism I've encountered in a long time: criticism that unabashedly loves its subject. -- Frank McConnell, University of California, Santa Barbara
About the Author
Jerome Christensen is chair of the English Department at the Univeristy of California, Irvine. He is also the author of Lord Byron's Strength: Romantic Writing and Commercial Society, also available from Johns Hopkins.
Reviews
Romanticism at the End of History is a book of remarkable wit, verve, and imagination... Frequently spellbinding and often wonderfully suggestive. -- Hugh Roberts European Romantic Review Jerome Christensen, sometime pupil of M. H. Abrams but assiduously conversant in all serious emergent critical idioms, has written a brilliant book as timely and intellectually demanding as one would expect. -- Paul Hamilton British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin and Review How, asks Christensen, can one resist commercialist hegemony in the posthistorical world?... This book bravely and passionately asserts the contemporary relevance of the utopian impulse in 'Romantic' writing without falling prey to its ideological posturing. -- Michael John Kooy Modern Language Review [Christensen's] formulation of the Romantics is fascinating, bound up with the future of poetry as well as the way in which we should think about their historical significance. This element of the study is tied to Christensen's stirring concern with the uses to which Romantic texts and Romantic thinking can be put in the twenty-first-century university environment. This Year's Work in English Studies Romanticism at the End of History provides a refreshingly new discussion of Romanticism that focuses on the use of Romantic texts and Romantic ideas instead of on their critique... His fresh take on the 'color of imagination' provides new insights into the connection between the lives and works of Wordsworth and Coleridge. -- Kandi Tayebi Rocky Mountain Review
Book Information
ISBN 9780801879036
Author Jerome Christensen
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
