Woodslane | Book - 9780801883965

Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Romantic Theory:

Forms of Reflexivity in the Revolutionary Era

ISBN-13: 9780801883965
Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
By Leon Chai
Price: AUD $137.00
Stock: 0 in stock
Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
Local release date: 13/09/2006
Format: Hardback 304 pages Weight: 0g
Categories: Literary theory [DSA]

Description

Table of Contents

Reviews

Google Preview

This original study explores the new idea of theory that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution. Leon Chai sees in the Romantic age a significant movement across several broad fields of intellectual endeavor, from theoretical concepts to an attempt to understand how they arise. He contends that this movement led to a spatial treatment of concepts, the primacy of development over concepts, and the creation of metatheory, or the formal analysis of theory. Chai begins with P. B. Shelley on the need for conceptual framework, or theory. He then considers how Friedrich Wolf and Friedrich Schlegel shift from a preoccupation with antiquity to a heightened self-awareness of Romantic nostalgia for that lost past. He finds a similar reflexivity in Napoleon's battle plan at Jena and, subsequently, in Hegel's move from substance to subject. Chai then turns to the sciences: Xavier Bichat's rejection of the idea of a unitary vital principle for life as process; the chemical theory of matter developed by Humphry Davy; and the work of +ëvariste Galois, whose proof of the solvability of equations using radicals ushered in the age of metatheory. Chai concludes with reactions to theory: Coleridge's proposal of the conflict between reason and understanding as a model of theory, Mary Shelley's effort to replace theory with a different kind of relationship to external others, and H+Âlderlin's reflection on the limits of representation and the possibility of fulfillment beyond it.

PrefaceAcknowledgments1. The Triumph of Theory2. Forms of Nostalgia3. The Movement of Return4. The House of Life5. Beyond Radical Empiricism6. Galois Theory7. Toward a Definition of Reflection8. The Dream of Subjectivity9. The Limits of TheoryConclusionEpilogueNotesBibliographic EssayPrimary SourcesIndex

""Leon Chai has produced an impressive study of European Romantic theory and theorizing that helps to place the current state of critical throy in historical perspective.""

Google Preview content

Popular Subjects

Woodslane Online Catalogues

Romantic Theory:

Forms of Reflexivity in the Revolutionary Era