New Romanticisms

What is the fate of Romantic studies in the wake of deconstruction and post-structuralism? In an attempt to answer this question, Clark and Goellnicht have brought together nine essays that represent a cross-section of the diverse critical scene in Romantic studies today. These essays reflect the thinking of a younger generation of Canadian scholars - those who came of age while the lines of the current debate about the future of Romantic studies were being drawn. They call for a renewed sense of the plurality of Romanticisms, deliberately avoiding the suggestion that the focus of Romantic studies should simply shift from the rhetoric of Romantic texts to the culture of Romanticism.

As a whole, the collection highlights the many ways in which contemporary theory has complicated our conception of Romanticism. Yet Romantic texts are not merely read through theory; they are shown to be sites of various forms of theorization themselves. Above all, the essays reveal the conflicting pressures at work within and among Romantic writers, whose texts are characterized by multiple strands of significance that entwine but do not build toward a synthesis.

The scholars represented here deliberately avoid constructing a new master-narrative for Romantic studies. Designed to provide an indication of the different directions that Romantic studies are currently headed in, beyond the totalizing opposition which could see deconstruction secede to historicism, New Romanticisms emphasizes the plurality of critical positions available to the contemporary scholar.