Dialectic of Romanticism

(Paperback)

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Dialectic of Romanticism presents a radical new assessment of the aesthetic and philosophical history and future of modernity. An exploration of the critique of modernism treats romanticism as central to the development of European modernism alongside the enlightenment and similarly subject to its own dead-ends and fatalities. The book also recovers concepts of civilization and civic aesthetics which are simultaneously modern and classically inspired - and provides a counter both to romantic historicism and enlightened models of progress. Finally, a retrospective critique of modernism analyses what happens to modernism's romantic-archaic and technological-futurist visions when they are translated from Europe to America. Dialectic of Romanticism argues that out of the European dialectic of romanticism and enlightenment a new dialectic of modernity is emerging in the New World - one which points beyond modernism and postmodernism.

Reviews

Reference & Research Book News, August 2006 -- mention
'very fascinating...philosophically vast and very wide-ranging in its implications.' Tim Cloudsley, The European Legacy, vol 12, No. 1, 2007
'The intellectual brilliance of Dialectic of Romanticism is evident on every page and it is refreshingly free of the defeatism evinced by many other works of cultural critique. It deserves to be widely read.' Vol 36, No 2, Pages 213-215, 2006 -- Professor Paul Bishop * Journal of European Studies *

Author Bio

Peter Murphy is Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University and James Cook University, Australia. His publications include The Political Economy of Prosperity: Successful Societies and Productive Cultures (2020), The Collective Imagination: The Creative Spirit of Free Societies (2012) and Dialectic of Romanticism: A Critique of Modernism (2004). David Roberts is Emeritus Professor, School of Languages and Cultures, Monash University, Australia. His publications include History of the Present: The Contemporary and its Culture (2021), The Total Work of Art in European Modernism, (2011) and Dialectic of Romanticism: A Critique of Modernism (2004).