English Fiction & Prose Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism, Romanticism - Literary Movements, Modern Philosophy - 19th Century, Modern Aesthetics, Literary Theory - General & Miscellaneous, Poetic Theory, English Fiction & Prose Lit
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Overview
This provocative and demanding book explores the difficulties surrounding the attempt to understand the relationship between literary and political discourse. It examines the initial formulation of these difficulties in Georgian Britain and traces them through the cultural debates of the Victorian men of letters to the critical ideologies of the twentieth-century literary academy. Richard Bourke offers an incisive critique of the way in which the idea of culture has been used as a means of resolving the failure to establish an adequate theory of politics in the wake of the French Revolution. Particular emphasis is placed on the work of William Wordsworth and on the nature of its posthumous appeal. The author shows how Wordsworth's writings signal a crisis in political thinking precipitated by the emergence of commercial civilisation and by the establishment of the concept of modernity. The argument then proceeds to examine how an attempt was made to remedy that crisis by the apostles of culture from Coleridge, Mill and Arnold to the literary intelligentsia of the twentieth century. Drawing upon cultural theory and the history of political thought, Bourke's original and ambitious work succeeds in exposing the critical desire to establish the 'aesthetic dimension' as a medium capable of reconciling the normative basis of political life with its historical predicament.Editorials
Booknews
A demanding exploration of the difficulties surrounding the attempt to understand the relationship between literary and political discourse. Bourke (English, University College, Dublin) examines the initial formulation of these difficulties in Georgian Britain and traces them through the cultural debates of the Victorian men of letters to the critical ideologies of the 20th-century literary academy. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
February 1, 1993
Publisher
New York : Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.
Pages
272
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780312096304