
Orientation in European Romanticism
The Art of Falling Upwards
Paul Hamilton(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 20. October 2022
Book
Hardback
322 pages
978-1-009-26823-3 (ISBN)
Description
Exploring the experiments in individual and national self-consciousness conducted during the Romantic period, this essential comparative study of European literature, philosophy and politics makes original and often surprising connections and contrasts to reveal how personal and social identities were re-orientated and disorientated from the French Revolution onwards. Reviving a contested moment in the history of aesthetic theory, this study shows how the growing awareness of irresolution in Kant's third Kritik allowed Romantic writers to put the aesthetic to radical uses not envisaged by its parent philosophy. It also recounts how they would go on to force philosophy to revise received notions of authority, empowering women and subordinated ethnic groups to re-orientate existing hierarchies. The sheer range and variety of writers covered is testament both to the breadth of writing that Kant's philosophy so rashly legitimated and to the wider importance of philosophy to the understanding of Romantic literature.
Reviews / Votes
'Orientation in European Romanticism lends itself to specialists and nonspecialists alike if one has the grit and raw passion for further exploration of European Romanticism and its continued aesthetic influence. This is indeed a worthy, if challenging, addition to the current critical literature on European Romanticism and aesthetics in general.' Wayne Deakin, European Romantic ReviewMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 160 mm
Width: 236 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
618 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-26823-3 (9781009268233)
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
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
04/2025
Cambridge University Press
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E-Book
10/2022
Cambridge University Press
€92.49
Available for download

E-Book
10/2022
Cambridge University Press
€92.49
Available for download
Person
Paul Hamilton is Professor of English at Queen Mary University of London. He has been Visiting Fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Visiting Professor at La Sapienza University of Rome. His book Metaromanticism: Aesthetics, Literature, Theory (2003) won the Jean-Pierre Barricelli book prize. His most recent books are, as editor, The Oxford handbook of European Romanticism (2016) and, as author, Realpoetik: European Romanticism and Literary Politics (2013).
Content
Part I. Disorientating Kant: 1. Introduction: sublimity and abjection; 2. Kleist and the Kant-crisis; 3. Hoelderlin and the philosophers; Part II. The Uses of Abjection: 4. The feminist humanism of Felicia Hemans: the poetics of Records of Woman (1828); 5. Thomas Moore and the national lyric; 6. Ugo Foscolo's literary hypocrisy; Part III. Optimism and Pessimism: 7. Balzac's comic pessimism; 8. George Sand's optimism; Part IV. Romancing the Modern: 9. Retrospect: Rilke translates Leopardi.