William N. Coker from the Program for Cultures, Civilization, and Ideas has published a new study of the role of dialectical thought in the emergence of the Romantic-era novel in Europe.
Published by Liverpool University Press, Dialectics of the Romantic Novel: Self-Estrangement, Mediation, and Narrative Form examines how an emerging literary genre, the novel, contributed to the rebirth of dialectical thought in Europe in the era just after the French Revolution.
In response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s and Immanuel Kant’s attempts to resolve contradictions that they found at the heart of the modern self, Romantic-era writers developed the novel as the genre most capable of embracing contradiction as an enabling condition for freedom. The book reads novels by Rousseau, Jean Paul, Friedrich Hölderlin, Mary Shelley, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe as experiments in living in contradiction, and as active contributors to a literary-philosophical dialogue reaching back to Plato and forward to Hegel and Marx.
Read more about this book here.