A Companion To European Romanticism

With its wide sweep and comprehensive coverage, this collection of essays analyzes the effects of the Romantic system on both literature and culture. Topics include the impact of both Shakespeare and Napoleon, Scottish perspectives, early Romanticism in Germany and its later shift to self-regulating structures, German Romantic fiction and drama as well as song, fairy tales, early French Romanticism and later drama, works on the brink of realism, the ode, the fragment and the cult of ruins, irony, the sacred and the aesthetic, nature, capitalism, orientalism, the poetess, opera, the theme of night, and the Romantic system of the arts. Surveys describe Romanticism in Italy, Spain and Poland and authors serving as topics include Byron, Foscolo, Hugo, Lamartine, Lermontov, Leopardi, Mickiewicz, Musset, Nerval and Pushkin. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Michael Ferber is Professor of English and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. His previous publications include The Social Vision of William Blake (1985), The Poetry of William Blake (1991), The Poetry of Shelley (1993), A Dictionary of Literary Symbols (1999), and an anthology, European Romantic Poetry (2005).