This work explores the nature of Romantic literature that was about to be born in Friedrich Schlegel's texts during the years around 1800. The main object of the study is the possibility of thinking of Romantic literature as an attempt to integrate literature and philosophy. The question that needs to be answered is the following: is it possible to see Schlegel's idea of Romantic literature as a daybreak or nightfall between the daylight of reason and the mysteries of creation? And secondly: if it is possible to think of Romantic literature as a combination of reflection and productive fantasy, then: how should we read and treat the exemplary Romantic novel - Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde?
Modernism and Coherence is an attempt to develop a negative aesthetics conceived as determinate resistance of artworks against the meaning assigned to them by criticism. From the accumulation of arguments on great texts of modernism, the book describes gestures of refusal that generate figures of negativity: Adorno's Aesthetic Theory becomes a whirlpool revolving around a center refusing predication; Wallace Stevens' poetry exhibits a phonetic escape valve against the pressure of reality; Robert Frost writes a poem that is ahead of you in both senses of the expression; and James Joyce's Ulysses reads its readers in waves of self-folding. This book is an effort to salvage literature as something in itself in a world that increasingly can only see what is for the other.
Realpoetik compares the writings of key German, French, and Italian Romantics, with an eye to their differences from British Romanticism. The principle of selection is to choose writers whose use of fiction is realistic — not realist, but fundamentally contributory to the purposes of non-fictional discourse. The political resonance audible when we put Real at the start of a compound noun is also true to the period looked at. At that time, positive political institutions were recovering from their upending in the French Revolution and their strategic re-shaping in the period of Restoration after Napoleon. In this volume, Paul Hamilton pinpoints a moment when the political imagination was actually creative of political reality. It is a long gloss on Friedrich Meinecke's description of the early Romantic period in Germany as 'that past era of teeming intellectual impulses with its excess of non-political political ideals', but Hamilton finds his insight into the contemporary inextricability of the ideal and the political true of France and Italy. Before the existence of a unified Germany or Italy, and in the new France after Napoleon, there was an opportunity and a necessity to imagine the kind of nation which would be desirable. Realpoetik examines the extent to which this illuminates the fiction and philosophy of Friedrich Schlegel, Madame de Staël, Giacomo Leopardi and others. It also reflects on current dissatisfaction with existing political arrangements and our contemporary desire to re-imagine a new, more representative politics.
In The Veiled God, Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft offers a detailed portrait of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s early life, ethics, and theology in its historical and social context. She also critically reflects on the enduring relevance of his work for the study of religion. The book analyses major texts from Schleiermacher’s early work. It argues that his experiments with literary form convey his understanding that human knowledge is inherently social, and that religion is thoroughly linguistic and historical. The book contends that by making finitude (and not freedom) a universal aspect to human life, Schleiermacher offers rich conceptual resources for considering what it means to be human in this world, both in relations of difference to others, and in relation to the infinite.
The nineteenth-century Romantic understanding of history is often confused with the longing for the past Golden Age. In this book, the Golden Age is seen from a new angle by discussing it in the context of the works of Friedrich Schlegel, who saw it not as bygone, but to be produced in the future.
Daybreak, Nightfall, Life is a nonfiction inspirational narrative. It isn’t just a narrative but an African American female’s memoir. Walker lived in Mississippi in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Moreover, she refused to wallow in her limitations. Rather, she used those limitations for motivation and hard work to accomplish her dreams and goals. Most professional opportunities were off limits to her. One job available was working in homes—cooking, washing, cleaning, and caring for the large landowner’s children. The other option included hoeing and harvesting crops. Neither one of those careers appealed to Walker. Therefore, she completed high school, junior college, and senior college. Free public transportation became available just before she began high school. Walker grabbed that opportunity. Elementary, high school, and college presented challenges. In elementary, she did not complain about using the secondhand books from the white schools. She realized she needed books to learn certain skills to succeed. Walker accepted her school, without running water or electricity, as a place to assemble, study, and learn academic and social skills. Daybreak, Nightfall, Life shows how Walker used her limitations and turned them into reasons to work harder. Readers will see how Walker handled each limitation and difficulty faced. If Walker made it in life after living with White Only signs all her childhood, any person regardless of race can do it too. It’s attitude and willingness to work that count. Just try! Anyone can choose to complain and make excuses. Not Walker! She wanted to become an educator. She wanted to become a school counselor. She wanted to become an author. God created each person uniquely. That uniqueness is enough to motivate one to accomplish his or her dreams/goals. That uniqueness is enough to help one understand what to do to prosper and enjoy life.
