A Half-Century of Greatness : : The Creative Imagination of Europe, 1848-1884 / / Frederic Ewen; ed. by Jeffrey Wollock, Aaron Kramer.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Ewen, Frederic,
• MitwirkendeR: Kramer, Aaron,
• HerausgeberIn: Kramer, Aaron,; Wollock, Jeffrey,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2007]; ©2007
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008A Half-Century of Greatness paints a vivid and dramatic picture of the creative thought of mid- to late nineteenth century Europe and the influence of the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848. It reveals often unexpected links between novelists, poets, and philosophers from England, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine-especially Dickens, Carlyle, Mill, the Brontës, and George Eliot; Hegel, Strauss, Feuerbach, Marx, Engels, Wagner, and several German poets; the Hungarian poet Sándor Petöfi; Gogol, Dostoevsky, Bakunin, and Herzen in Russia, and the great Ukrainian poet Shevchenko. Ewen goes on to trace the transition from Romanticism to Victorianism, or what he calls “the Victorian compromise”-the ascendancy of the middle class.The book was reconstructed and edited by Dr. Jeffrey Wollock from Ewen’s final manuscript. It includes the author's own reference citations throughout, a reconstructed bibliography, and an updated “further reading” list.This is Ewen’s last work, the long-lost companion to his Heroic Imagination. Together, these books present a panorama of the social, political, and artistic aspects of European Romanticism, especially foreshadowing and complementing recent work on the relation of Marxism to romanticism. Anyone interested in what Lukacs called “Romantic anticapitalism,”; who appreciates such books as Marshall Berman's Adventures in Marxism or E.P. Thompson's The Romantics (1997), will find Ewen’s work a welcome addition.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Editor’s Introduction -- Foreword -- Part I: England at the Great Divide: 1830-1848 -- 1. The Battle for Reform -- 2. The Battle for Minds and Secular Salvation: “Utopia” and “Utility” -- 3. Thomas Carlyle: Out of the “Nay” into the “Everlasting Yea” -- 4. Charles Dickens: The Novel in “The Battle of Life” -- 5. John Stuart Mill: The Majesty of Reason -- PART II. Russia: Dark Laughter and Siberia Nikolay Gogol and Young Dostoevsky -- 1. The Dark Laughter of Nikolay Gogol -- 2. Young Dostoevsky: The Road to Siberia -- PART III. Europe: Revolution 1848-1849 -- 1. The Lightning of Ideas: Reason and Revolution 1835-1848 -- 2. Revolution: 1848-1849 -- 3. The Lyre and the Sword: Art and Revolution -- Part IV : Swan Song and Elegy: Germany and the Poets -- PART V: England: Crystal Palace and Bleak House -- 1. The March of Empire and the Victorian Conscience -- 2. The Novel and the Crisis of Conscience: The Brontës— The Caged Rebels of Haworth -- PART VI. Woman of Valor: George Eliot and the Victorians -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index