Romanticism and the Contingent Self:The Challenge of Representation (Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print)

by: Michael Falk (Author)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Edition: 2024th

Publication Date: 2024/5/24

Language: English

Print Length: 307 pages

ISBN-10: 3031499581

ISBN-13: 9783031499586

Book 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 mode self, this study unveils an alteative 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.

About the Author

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 mode self, this study unveils an alteative 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.