Imagination under pressure, 1789-1832
Subtitle: aesthetics, politics, and utility
By: John Whale.
Series: Cambridge studies in Romanticism ;; 39
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
Subjects: English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.; English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism.; Political science -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Political science -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.; Utilitarianism -- Great Britain -- History.; Romanticism -- Great Britain.; Aesthetics, British.
Description: "This study offers a reassessment of one of the most important concepts of the Romantic period - the imagination. John Whale locates the Romantic imagination within the period's lively and often antagonistic polemics on aesthetics and politics. In particular he focuses on the different versions of imagination produced within British writing in response to the cultural crises of the French Revolution and the ideology of utilitarianism. Through detailed analysis of key texts by Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Hazlitt, Cobbett and Coleridge, Imagination Under Pressure seeks to restore the role of imagination as a more positive force within cultural critique."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-236) and index.