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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Why the Romantics Matter

Why the Romantics Matter

Gay, Peter

Hardcover

Series: Why X Matters

PhilosophyArt HistoryLiterary Criticism

ISBN10: 0300144296
ISBN13: 9780300144291
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: Jan 13 2015
Pages: 176
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.60 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.20
Language: English
A renowned scholar's reflections on the romantic period, its disparate participants, and our unacknowledged debt to them

With his usual wit and élan, esteemed historian Peter Gay enters the contentious, long-standing debates over the romantic period. Here, in this concise and inviting volume, he reformulates the definition of romanticism and provides a fresh account of the immense achievements of romantic writers and artists in all media.

Gay's scope is wide, his insights sharp. He takes on the recurring questions about how to interpret romantic figures and their works. Who qualifies to be a romantic? What ties together romantic figures who practice in different countries, employ different media, even live in different centuries? How is modernism indebted to romanticism, if at all?

Guiding readers through the history of the romantic movement across Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland, Gay argues that the best way to conceptualize romanticism is to accept its complicated nature and acknowledge that there is no single basket to contain it. Gay conceives of romantics in families, whose individual members share fundamental values but retain unique qualities. He concludes by demonstrating that romanticism extends well into the twentieth century, where its deep and lasting impact may be measured in the work of writers such as T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

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