Romanticism, Aesthetics, and Nationalism

by David Aram Kaiser

Overview

This ambitious and original study explores the connections between aesthetic theory and political theory from the era of Romanticism to the twentieth century. David Kaiser traces these ideas through Schiller and Coleridge, Arnold, Mill and Ruskin, to Adorno and Habermas. He analyzes the problems that contemporary literary theory faces in attempting to connect the aesthetic and political spheres, and suggests that we rethink the aesthetic sphere in order to regain that connection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521022682
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/10/2005
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Romanticism , #34
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	172
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.39(d)
Lexile:	1540L (what's this?)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Modernity, subjectivity, liberalism, and nationalism; 2. The symbol and the aesthetic sphere; 3. Schiller's aesthetic state; 4. Symbol, state, and clerisy: the aesthetic politics of Coleridge; 5. The best self and the private self: Matthew Arnold on culture and the state; 6. Aesthetic kingship and queenship: Ruskin on the state and the home; 7. The aesthetic and political spheres in contemporary theory: Adorno and Habermas.