The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 5, Romanticism

This volume of the celebrated Cambridge History of Literary Criticism series, first published in 2000, addresses literary criticism of the Romantic period, chiefly in Europe. Its seventeen chapters are by internationally-respected academics and explore a range of key topics and themes. The book is designed to help readers locate essential information and to develop approaches and viewpoints for a deeper understanding of issues discussed by Romantic critics or those that were fundamental to their works. Primary and secondary bibliographies provide a guide for further research. The coverage of the book, focusing on themes and genres but drawing in discussion of the key authors, makes it the standard reference work on the period c.1780–c.1830. These remain in many ways the formative years for modern Anglo-American as well as European literary history. Title Page 4 Contents 8 Contributors 10 Introduction 14 1 Classical standards in the period 20 2 Innovation and modernity 42 3 The French Revolution 62 4 Transcendental philosophy and Romantic criticism 85 5 Nature 105 6 Scientific models 128 7 Religion and literature 151 8 Language theory and the art of understanding 175 9 The transformation of rhetoric 198 10 Romantic irony 216 11 Theories of genre 239 12 Theory of the novel 263 13 The impact of Shakespeare 285 14 The vocation of criticism and the crisis of the republic of letters 309 15 Women, gender and literary criticism 334 16 Literary history and historicism 351 17 Literature and the other arts 375 Bibliography 400 "This latest volume in the celebrated Cambridge History of Literary Criticism addresses literary criticism of the Romantic period, chiefly in Europe. Its seventeen chapters are by internationally respected academics and explore a range of key topics and themes. The book is designed to help readers locate essential information and to develop approaches and viewpoints for a deeper understanding of issues discussed by Romantic critics or that were fundamental to their works. Primary and secondary bibliographies provide a guide for further research." v. 1. Classical criticism / edited by George A. Kennedy v. 3. The Renaissance / edited by Glyn P. Norton v. 4. The eighteenth century / edited by H.B. Nisbet and Claude Rawson v. 5. Romanticism v. 7. Modernism and the New Criticism / edited by A. Walton Litz, Louis Menand, and Lawrence Rainey v. 8. From formalism to poststructuralism / edited by Raman Selden This unique volume offers for the first time a comprehensive introduction to the literary theory and criticism produced during the Middle Ages. The essays cover all the main traditions in Medieval Latin, Byzantine Greek, and the major European vernaculars, as well as the humanist debates on literature and its uses.