Description
Book SynopsisRevolutionary Romanticism draws on almost two centuries of intertwined traditions of cultural and political subversion. In this rich collection of writings by artists, scholars and revolutionaries, the transgressions of the past are recaptured and transvalued for the benefit of the struggles of today and tomorrow.
Along the way, new light is shed on the radical sensibilities of Novalis, Friedrich Hölderlin and Friedrich Schlegel, and the profoundly oppositional poetics of Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Lord Byron and William Blake. The social romanticism of Jules Michelet is acclaimed for its visionary, quasi-religious breadth. The Paris Commune is figured by Karl Marx, Jules Vallès and Arthur Rimbaud. All-but-forgotten episodes of German expressionism and anarchism are recalled. The romantic outlook of Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse is relocated in their absolute negation of the social order. Surrealism, the prehensile tail of romanticism, is foll
