Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Classical standards in the period
- 2 Innovation and modernity
- 3 The French Revolution
- 4 Transcendental philosophy and Romantic criticism
- 5 Nature
- 6 Scientific models
- 7 Religion and literature
- 8 Language theory and the art of understanding
- 9 The transformation of rhetoric
- 10 Romantic irony
- 11 Theories of genre
- 12 Theory of the novel
- 13 The impact of Shakespeare
- 14 The vocation of criticism and the crisis of the republic of letters
- 15 Women, gender and literary criticism
- 16 Literary history and historicism
- 17 Literature and the other arts
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
3 - The French Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Classical standards in the period
- 2 Innovation and modernity
- 3 The French Revolution
- 4 Transcendental philosophy and Romantic criticism
- 5 Nature
- 6 Scientific models
- 7 Religion and literature
- 8 Language theory and the art of understanding
- 9 The transformation of rhetoric
- 10 Romantic irony
- 11 Theories of genre
- 12 Theory of the novel
- 13 The impact of Shakespeare
- 14 The vocation of criticism and the crisis of the republic of letters
- 15 Women, gender and literary criticism
- 16 Literary history and historicism
- 17 Literature and the other arts
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Literary and cultural history is a hard task to pursue under the tutelage of postmodernity. Grand or master narratives are now discouraged, so that no one can any longer confidently propose Hegelian sequences describing the organic unfolding of events through time, or the immanent relation between phenomena within time, in the manner of the traditional Geistesgeschichte. The prevailing admonitions commonly appear as moralexhortations, telling us that to proliferate grand narratives is repressive and reprehensible. But the difficulties are also and even more exigently epistemological: how do we know how one thing is connected with another within a history or a culture? What does it mean to speak, as Hazlitt and many others did, of the ‘spirit of the age’? How can one prevent even the simplest of little narratives from escalating into something grander, whether by tacit assumption or empirical accretion? Perhaps the safest literary history is once again the most traditional: that showing the influence of one writer or writing upon another, with citations in place and cases closed. But it is hard to restrict ourselves to this kind of literary history because we still inherit an Enlightenment disposition to do so much more, to explore and explain the inherence of literature and literary criticism to culture and history on the grandest scale.
What we call the French Revolution has functioned from the first both as an instance of and an apparent solution to this problem of cause and effect in culture and history. Unlike many other ‘revolutions’ whose presence marks the narratives of historians and critics – agricultural, industrial, demographic, consumer and so on – the French Revolution seems to have had a clear beginning in 1789 and an end by 1815 if not before.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 49 - 71Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
References
, Desire and domestic fiction: a political history of the novel, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
, Desire and domestic fiction: a political history of the novel, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
, Theatre and disorder in late Georgian London, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Rhetorical missiles and double-talk: Napoleon, Wordsworth, and the invasion scare of 1804’, in Romanticism, radicalism, and the press, (ed.), Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
, ‘Die Auffassung der Revolution in der deutschen Frühromantik’, in Essays on European literature in honor of Liselotte Dieckmann, , and (eds.), St Louis, MO: Washington University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
, ‘Französische Revolution und Antikekult’, in Europäische Romantik i, (ed.), Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft 14, Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 1982.Google Scholar
, Unendliche Perfektibilität: europäische Romantik und französische Revolution, Paderborn: Schöningh, 1989.Google Scholar
, The complete poetry and prose of William Blake, rev. edn, and (eds.), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982.Google Scholar
, The melodramatic imagination: Balzac, Henry James, melodrama, and the mode of excess, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
, Romantics, rebels, and reactionaries: English literature and its background, 1760–1830., New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.Google Scholar
, Romantics, rebels, and reactionaries: English literature and its background, 1760–1830, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
, ‘An essay on English poetry’, in Specimens of the British poets: with biographical and critical notices, and an essay on English poetry, London: John Murray, 1819.Google Scholar
, Specimens of the British poets: with biographical and critical notices, and an essay on English poetry, 7 vols., London: John Murray, 1819.Google Scholar
, In the theatre of Romanticism: Coleridge, nationalism, women, Cambridge University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘On the principles of genial criticism’, in Biographia literaria, edited with his aesthetical essays, (ed.), 2 vols., OxfordUniversity Press, 1962.Google Scholar
, Biographia literaria, or, biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions, and (eds.), 2 vols., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.Google Scholar
, ‘Poetry in an age of revolution’, in The Cambridge companion to British Romanticism, (ed.), Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
, The collected writings of Thomas de Quincey, new edn, (ed.), 14 vols., Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1889–90.Google Scholar
, The French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, 1789–1832, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Lumières et romantisme: le choc de la révolution’, Bulletin de la société américaine de philosophie de langue française 2 (1990–91).Google Scholar
, The function of criticism: from ‘The spectator’ to post-structuralism, London: Verso, 1984.Google Scholar
, ‘Die Revolution als Herausforderung in Literatur und Publizistik’, in Zwischen Revolution und Restauration: Klassik, Romantik 1786–1815, Deutsche Literatur: eine Sozialgeschichte 5, (ed.), Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1980.Google Scholar
(ed.), Les romantiques allemands et la révolution française, Strasbourg: Université des sciences humaines de Strasbourg, 1989.Google Scholar
(ed.), Fictions of the French Revolution, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
and (eds.), A critical dictionary of the French Revolution, (trans.), Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1989.Google Scholar
and (eds.), Revolution and English Romanticism: politics and rhetoric, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990.Google Scholar
, The complete works of William Hazlitt, (ed.), 21 vols., 1930–4, rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1967.Google Scholar
, Aesthetics: lectures on fine art, (trans.), 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, vol. I.Google Scholar
, The Romantic school and other essays, and (eds.), The German library 33, New York: Continuum, 1985.Google Scholar
, Politics, culture and class in the French Revolution, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984.Google Scholar
, Contributions to the ‘Edinburgh review’, London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1854.Google Scholar
, Contributions to The Edinburgh review, The modern British essayists 6, Philadelphia, PA: Hart, 1853.Google Scholar
, ‘Romantic criticism and the meanings of the French Revolution’, Studies in Romanticism 28 (1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , The literary absolute: the theory of literature in German Romanticism, and (trans.), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988.Google Scholar
, Histoire de la littérature française, remaniée et complétée pour la période 1850–1950, (ed.), Paris: Hachette, 1952.Google Scholar
, ‘Die frühe Romantische Dichtung in England: die Geburt einer Romantik aus dem Geiste der Revolution’, in Europäische Romantik ii, (ed.), Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft 15, Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 1982.Google Scholar
, Festivals and the French Revolution, (trans.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
, English Romanticism and the French tradition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Chateaubriand et son groupe littéraire sous l'empire: cours professé a Liège en 1848–1849., (ed.), 2 vols., Paris: Garnier, 1948.Google Scholar
, ‘The young Coleridge: Romantic utopianism and the French Revolution’, Studies in Romanticism 28 (1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘On Dante in relation to philosophy’, and ‘The philosophy of art’, in (ed.), The origins of modern critical thought: German aesthetic and literary criticism from Lessing to Hegel, Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
, On the aesthetic education of man, and (ed. and trans.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.Google Scholar
, On the aesthetic education of man, and (eds. and trans.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.Google Scholar
, A course of lectures on dramatic art and literature, (trans.), (ed.), London: Bohn, 1846.Google Scholar
, Friedrich Schlegel's ‘Lucinde’ and the fragments, (trans.), Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1971.Google Scholar
, Lectures on the history of literature, ancient and modern, (ed.), Philadelphia, PA: Moss & Co., 1863.Google Scholar
, Friedrich Schlegel's ‘Lucinde’ and the fragments, (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971.Google Scholar
, Shelley's poetry and prose: authoritative texts, criticism, and (eds.), New York: Norton, 1977.Google Scholar
, Romanticism, nationalism and the revolt against theory, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993.Google Scholar
, Romanticism, nationalism, and the revolt against theory, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993.Google Scholar
, The academic postmodern and the rule of literature: a report on half-knowledge, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.Google Scholar
, Wordsworth's historical imagination: the poetry of displacement, London and New York: Methuen, 1987.Google Scholar
(ed.), The origins of modern critical thought: German aesthetics and literary criticism from Lessing to Hegel, Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
, The influence of literature upon society, (trans.), 2nd ed., 2 vols., London: Henry Colburn, 1812.Google Scholar
, Collected Writings, new edn, (ed.), 14 vols., Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1889–90.Google Scholar
and (ed.), Die französische Revolution im Spiegel der deutschen Literatur, Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg, 1979.Google Scholar
, ‘The concept of Romanticism in literary history’, in Concepts of criticism, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963.Google Scholar
, A history of modern criticism: 1750–1950., vol. II: The Romantic age, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1955, 8 vols.Google Scholar
, A history of modern criticism: 1750–1950, vol. II: The Romantic age, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1955, 8 vols.Google Scholar
, The prose works of William Wordsworth, and (eds.), 3 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.Google Scholar
- 2
- Cited by