Rousseau, Robespierre and English Romanticism

ISBN-13: 9780521641005 / Angielski / Twarda / 1999 / 304 str.

Gregory Dart

Opis

This book reopens the question of Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution and on English Romanticism, by examining the relationship between his confessional writings and his political theory. Gregory Dart argues that by looking at the way in which Rousseau's writings were mediated by the speeches and actions of Robespierre, we can gain a clearer and more concrete sense of the legacy he left to English writers. He shows how the writings of Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth and Hazlitt rehearse and reflect upon the Jacobin tradition in the aftermath of the Terror.

Recenzje

"This recent book by Gregory Dart is a well-informed and intelligently executed account of the impact of Rousseau's thought upon British romanticism... Rousseau, Robespirre, and Romanticism is a valuable, highly readable addition to romantic scholarship, a text that future analysts of the intersections of politics and literature in the age of romanticism would do well to read with care. Alertly attentive to the texts it reads, it sketches with considerable success the highly important process of Rousseau's assimilation into the political life of England in the post-revolutionary era." Stidies in Romanticism, 40 (Summer 01)

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. Despotism of liberty: Robespierre and the illusion of politics; 2. The politics of confession in Rousseau and Robespierre; 3. Chivalry, justice and the law in William Godwin's Caleb Williams; 4. 'The Prometheus of Sentiment': Rousseau, Wollstonecraft and aesthetic education; 5. Strangling the infant Hercules: Malthus and the population controversy; 6. 'The virtue of one paramount mind': Wordsworth and the politics of the mountain; 7. 'Sour Jacobinism': William Hazlitt and the resistance to reform; Bibliography.