
Romanticism and the Contingent Self
The Challenge of Representation
Michael Falk(Author)
Palgrave Macmillan (Publisher)
Published on 24. May 2024
Book
Hardback
XV, 292 pages
978-3-031-49958-6 (ISBN)
Description
This book offers a new critique of selfhood in Romantic literature. In the past, Romanticism has been seen as an individualistic movement, with writers believing in the 'centrality' of the self. Challenging this prevailing view of Romanticism and the modern self, this study unveils an alternative tradition of Romantic writing in which the self is fragile, degenerate, non-existent - or in a word, contingent. It combines philosophy, intellectual history, literary studies and digital humanities and takes a transnational approach both in its coverage of philosophical thought and literature, including case studies from England, Ireland, Scotland and colonial Australia, with examples from American and European works as well. The book also uses innovative digital techniques such as text analysis, sentiment mining and network analysis to enrich the exploration of text and context. It covers all major genres of Romantic writing: fiction (realist novels), poetry (the sonnet), non-fiction prose (biography) and drama (gothic tragedy). Providing a new framework for understanding the contingent self, this book is of interest to scholars and students of Romantic literature, philosophy of the self and digital humanities.
More details
Series
Edition
2024 ed.
Language
English
Place of publication
Cham
Switzerland
Publishing group
Springer International Publishing
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
12 s/w Abbildungen
XV, 292 p. 12 illus.
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
511 gr
ISBN-13
978-3-031-49958-6 (9783031499586)
DOI
10.1007/978-3-031-49959-3
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
05/2025
Palgrave Macmillan
€117.69
Shipment within 15-20 days

E-Book
05/2024
1st Edition
Palgrave Macmillan
€117.69
Available for download
Person
Michael Falk
is Senior Lecturer in Digital Studies in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is a literary scholar and programmer, whose work considers how computing can expand the study of literature, and how literature can expand the study of computing. His work appears in the
Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
,
Frontiers in AI and Robotics
, the
John Clare Society Journal
, and elsewhere.
Romanticism and the Contingent Self
is his first book.
Content
1 Introduction: Strange Multiplicities.- 2 Philosophy: Eighteenth-Century Theories of Contingent Selfhood.- 3 Fiction: Growing Down in the Novels of Maria Edgeworth and Amelia Opie.- 4 Poetry: Absence of Self in the Sonnets of Charlotte Smith and John Clare.- 5 Drama: Inward Seas in the Tragedies of Joanna Baillie and Charles Harpur.- 6 Life: The 'Multiform' Self in Tom Moore's
Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
(1830-31).- 7 Conclusion: Rising to the Challenge of Representation.