Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Romantic Discourse And Political Modernity: Wordsworth, The Intellectual And Cultural Critique

0/5 ( ratings)

This provocative and demanding book explores the difficulties surrounding the attempt to understand the relationship between literary and political discourse. It examines the initial formulation of these difficulties in Georgian Britain and traces them through the cultural debates of the Victorian men of letters to the critical ideologies of the twentieth-century literary academy. Richard Bourke offers an incisive critique of the way in which the idea of culture has been used as a means of resolving the failure to establish an adequate theory of politics in the wake of the French Revolution. Particular emphasis is placed on the work of William Wordsworth and on the nature of its posthumous appeal. The author shows how Wordsworth's writings signal a crisis in political thinking precipitated by the emergence of commercial civilisation and by the establishment of the concept of modernity. The argument then proceeds to examine how an attempt was made to remedy that crisis by the apostles of culture from Coleridge, Mill and Arnold to the literary intelligentsia of the twentieth century. Drawing upon cultural theory and the history of political thought, Bourke's original and ambitious work succeeds in exposing the critical desire to establish the 'aesthetic dimension' as a medium capable of reconciling the normative basis of political life with its historical predicament.

Language: English

Pages: 353

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Release: January 01, 1993

ISBN: 0312096305

ISBN 13: 9780312096304

Romantic Discourse And Political Modernity: Wordsworth, The Intellectual And Cultural Critique

0/5 ( ratings)

This provocative and demanding book explores the difficulties surrounding the attempt to understand the relationship between literary and political discourse. It examines the initial formulation of these difficulties in Georgian Britain and traces them through the cultural debates of the Victorian men of letters to the critical ideologies of the twentieth-century literary academy. Richard Bourke offers an incisive critique of the way in which the idea of culture has been used as a means of resolving the failure to establish an adequate theory of politics in the wake of the French Revolution. Particular emphasis is placed on the work of William Wordsworth and on the nature of its posthumous appeal. The author shows how Wordsworth's writings signal a crisis in political thinking precipitated by the emergence of commercial civilisation and by the establishment of the concept of modernity. The argument then proceeds to examine how an attempt was made to remedy that crisis by the apostles of culture from Coleridge, Mill and Arnold to the literary intelligentsia of the twentieth century. Drawing upon cultural theory and the history of political thought, Bourke's original and ambitious work succeeds in exposing the critical desire to establish the 'aesthetic dimension' as a medium capable of reconciling the normative basis of political life with its historical predicament.

Language: English

Pages: 353

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Release: January 01, 1993

ISBN: 0312096305

ISBN 13: 9780312096304

More books from Richard Bourke

Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke

4.2/5 ( ratings)

The Princeton History of Modern Ireland

Peace In Ireland: The War of Ideas

3.3/5 ( ratings)

Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective

Political Judgement: Essays for John Dunn

4.3/5 ( ratings)

Contemporary Irish Culture and Politics

The Political Thought of the Irish Revolution

Correspondence: Between the Year 1744, and the Period of His Decease, in 1797. Vol IV

Correspondence: Between the Year 1744, and the Period of His Decease, in 1797. Vol II

History in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Rate this book!

Write a review?