Disastrous Subjectivities
Romaniticism, Modernity, and the Real
Published on 30. September 2019
Book
Hardback
248 pages
978-1-4875-0614-8 (ISBN)
Description
In sharply original readings of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Disastrous Subjectivities explores modernity's failed promise to bring about a just social order under the ongoing threat of climate change.
Drawing on Kantian critical philosophy and Lacanian theory, this book traverses aspects of the history of science, the form of the novel, the limits of historicism, and the impasses of moral autonomy. What passes for modernity takes shape not as truly modern or secular, but instead as a mode perpetually haunted by a traumatic sublime. The demand to realize justice within history turns out to require more than history can make possible, and more than the subject can bear.
Drawing on Kantian critical philosophy and Lacanian theory, this book traverses aspects of the history of science, the form of the novel, the limits of historicism, and the impasses of moral autonomy. What passes for modernity takes shape not as truly modern or secular, but instead as a mode perpetually haunted by a traumatic sublime. The demand to realize justice within history turns out to require more than history can make possible, and more than the subject can bear.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
499 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4875-0614-8 (9781487506148)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
David Collings is a professor of English at Bowdoin College.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Catastrophic Benevolence, Ruinous Immortality: Wollstonecraft's Shipwreck
2. Prohibiting the Impossible: Godwin and the Formation of the Real
3. After the Covenant: Undead Subjectivity in Wordsworth's Alpine Sublime
4. Trusting to the Billows: Byron's Poetics of the Real
5. Tarrying with Disaster: Ethical Destitution in Shelley's "The Triumph of Life"
Coda: Melting the Sublime: Disastrous Objectivity in the Era of Climate Change
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
1. Catastrophic Benevolence, Ruinous Immortality: Wollstonecraft's Shipwreck
2. Prohibiting the Impossible: Godwin and the Formation of the Real
3. After the Covenant: Undead Subjectivity in Wordsworth's Alpine Sublime
4. Trusting to the Billows: Byron's Poetics of the Real
5. Tarrying with Disaster: Ethical Destitution in Shelley's "The Triumph of Life"
Coda: Melting the Sublime: Disastrous Objectivity in the Era of Climate Change
Notes
Bibliography
Index