Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity

Sayre Robert Sayre, Lowy Michael Lowy, Porter Catherine Porter

Description

Romanticism is a worldview that finds expression over a whole range of cultural fields-not only in literature and art but in philosophy, theology, political theory, and social movements. In Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity Michael Lowy and Robert Sayre formulate a theory that defines romanticism as a cultural protest against modern bourgeois industrial civilization and work to reveal the unity that underlies the extraordinary diversity of romanticism from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century.After critiquing previous conceptions of romanticism and discussing its first European manifestations, Lowy and Sayre propose a typology of the sociopolitical positions held by romantic writers-from "restitutionist" to various revolutionary/utopian forms. In subsequent chapters, they give extended treatment to writers as diverse as Coleridge and Ruskin, Charles Peguy, Ernst Bloch and Christa Wolf. Among other topics, they discuss the complex relationship between Marxism and romanticism before closing with a reflection on more contemporary manifestations of romanticism (for example, surrealism, the events of May 1968, and the ecological movement) as well as its future.Students and scholars of literature, humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies will be interested in this elegant and thoroughly original book.

Sujets

• Cultural studies
• Modern history
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822381297
• Langue: English

Extrait

romanticism against the tide of modernity

post- contemporary interventions series editors stanley fish and fredric jameson

Romanticism AgainsttheTide ofModernity . MICHAEL LÖWY AND ROBERT SAYRE

TranslatedbyCatherinePorter

d u k e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s

d u r h a m / l o n d o n

2 0 0 1

∫2001 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Typeset in Carter and Cone Galliard by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear

on the last printed page of this book.

Contents .

1.Redefining Romanticism TheRomanticEnigma,or‘‘TumultuousColors’’ TheConceptofRomanticism TheRomanticCritiqueofModernity The Genesis of the Phenomenon

2.Romanticism: Political and Social Diversity Outline of a Typology HypothesesforaSociologyofRomanticism

3.:aMxrsimnadoRmanticismsusrucxE Karl Marx RosaLuxemburg György Lukács

4.Visages of Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century RomanticismandtheFrenchRevolution: The Young Coleridge RomanticismandtheIndustrialRevolution: The Social Critique of John Ruskin

5.Visages of Romanticism in the Twentieth Century RomanticismandReligion:TheMystical Socialism of Charles Péguy

1 1 14 29 43

57 57 83

88 88 99 104

117

117

127

147

156

vi

RomanticismandUtopia:ErnstBloch’sDaydream RomanticismasaFeministVision:TheQuest of Christa Wolf

6.The Fire Is Still Burning: From Surrealism to the Present Day and Beyond Surrealism May 1968 ContemporaryMassCulture The New Social Movements TheNewReligiousMovements TheContemporaryRomanticCritiqueof Civilization WhatFutureforRomanticism?

Notes Works Cited Index

169

187

214 214 219 225 229 230

232 249

257 291 311

romanticism against the tide of modernity

1 Redefining Romanticism .

the romantic enigma, or ‘‘tumultuous colors’’

What is Romanticism? Apparently an undecipherable enigma, the Roman- tic phenomenon seems to defy analysis, not only because its exuberant diversity resists any attempt to reduce it to a common denominator but also and especially because of its fabulously contradictory character, its nature as coincidentia oppositorum:simultaneously (or alternately) revolutionary and counterrevolutionary, individualistic and communitarian, cosmopolitan and nationalistic, realist and fantastic, retrograde and utopian, rebellious and melancholic, democratic and aristocratic, activist and contemplative, republican and monarchist, red and white, mystical and sensual. These contradictions permeate not only the Romantic phenomenon as a whole but also the life and work of individual authors, and sometimes even indi- vidual texts. Some critics seem inclined to see contradiction, dissonance, ∞ and internal conflict as the only unifying element of Romanticism. How- ever, it is di≈cult to take that thesis as anything but an avowal of confusion. All these complications are compounded because since the nineteenth century we have been in the habit of using the term ‘‘Romantic’’ to desig- nate not only novelists, poets, and artists but also political ideologues (po- litical Romanticism has been the object of numerous studies), philoso- phers, theologians, historians, economists, and others. In what sense do such diverse phenomena, located in such disparate spheres of cultural life, derive from a single concept? The easiest solution seems to be to eliminate the term itself. The best-