Romantic disillusionism and the sceptical tradition / / Rolf P. Lessenich.

• VerfasserIn: Lessenich, Rolf P.,
• Place / Publishing House: Göttingen : : V & R Unipress :, Bonn University Press,, [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Super alta perennis : Studien zur Wirkung der Klassischen Antike ; 20
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (484 pages).

Neoplatonic Romanticism had a dark underside from its inception: Romantic Disillusionism, encompassing the Gothic and the new demonic doppelganger. The Classical Tradition's conflict between Plato and Pyrrho, foundationalism and scepticism, optimism and pessimism was thus continued. Lord Byron's was the most listened-to and echoed voice of Romantic Disillusionism in Europe, though by far not the only one. This comparative study of a multiplicity of sceptical English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Polish, and Czech voices shows how traditional Pyrrhonic arguments were updated to suit the decades of the Romantic Movement, surviving as a subversive countercurrent to later Victorianism and resurging in the literature of the Decadence and Fin de Siecle. --Amazon.com.

Table of Contents

The two sides of romanticism -- Introduction -- Romantic disillusionism -- Heterogeneous man's weak will and mind -- The vanity of the passions (1) The vanity of love (2) The vanity of glory -- The injustice of the world -- Doubt of synthesis: the aimlessness of history -- Doubt of resurrection and regeneration: cultural pessimism -- Man's isolation and progressive disappointment -- The falseness of philosophical essentialism and systems -- Retrospect and outlook: the intellectual searcher's negative epiphany -- Select bibliography -- Index.