Publisher's Synopsis
"Romanticism and postmodern theory ...structure themselves around the trope of 'fantastic modernity,' in which the possibility of historical difference operates as an aporia of historical thought, a condition that testifies to the radical indeterminacy of historical difference as a stable form of human truth."--from the Introduction Focusing on the convergence of Romantic studies and literary theory over the past twenty-five years, Orrin N. C. Wang pairs a series of contemporary critics with "originary" Romantic writers in order to illuminate the work of both the contemporary theorist and earlier Romantic. Wang examines Paul de Man's deconstructive use of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jerome McGann's Marxist-inflected appropriation of Heinrich Heine, contemporary feminist interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft, and Harold Bloom's pragmatic reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through these examinations, along with commentary on Keats, Jameson, Lovejoy, and Spitzer, Fantastic Modernity attempts a series of new readings of both the theory being used by the various critics and the primary Romantic texts under consideration.;"De Man, McGann, Bloom: these are three of the major names in criticism of the Romantics in the last three decades. To say that Wang has earned the right to speak among them is perhaps the briefest way of indicating my respect for his work. And this is exciting work, offering the traditional pleasure of seeing familiar texts from new angles, and the rare one of theoretical works in conjunctions as lucid and logical as they are surprising."--Peter Manning, University of Southern California "De Man, McGann, Bloom: these are three of the major names in criticism of the Romantics in the last three decades. To say that Wang has earned the right to speak among them is perhaps the briefest way of indicating my respect for his work. And this is exciting work."--Peter Manning, University of Southern California
