Romantic Sobriety – Sensation, Revolution, Commodification, History - Hardcover

Wang, Orrin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1421400669 ISBN 13: 9781421400662

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011

Synopsis

This book explores the relationship among Romanticism, deconstruction, and Marxism by examining tropes of sensation and sobriety in a set of exemplary texts from Romantic literature and contemporary literary theory. Orrin N. C. Wang explains how themes of sensation and sobriety, along with Marxist-related ideas of revolution and commodification, set the terms of narrative surrounding the history of Romanticism as a movement. The book is both polemical and critical, engaging in debates with modern thinkers such as Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Walter Benn Michaels, and Slavoj i ek, as well as presenting fresh readings of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writers, including Wordsworth, Kant, Shelley, Byron, Bronte, and Keats. Romantic Sobriety combines deeply complex, close readings with a broader reflection on Romanticism and its implications for literary study. It will interest scholars who study Romanticism from a number of perspectives, including those interested in bodily and social consumption, the roles of addiction and abstinence in literature, the connection between literary and visual culture, the intersection of critical theory and Romanticism, and the relationships among language, historical knowledge, and political practice.

About this title

About the Author

Orrin N. C. Wang is a professor in the Department of English and the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Maryland and author of Fantastic Modernity: Dialectical Readings in Romanticism and Theory, also published by Johns Hopkins. He is the series editor of the electronic Romantic Circles Praxis Series.

Edition details

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1421400669
• ISBN 13: 9781421400662
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384