Romanticism, Aesthetics, and Nationalism [Paperback]

This ambitious study, first published in 1999, explores connections between aesthetics and politics from Romanticism to the twentieth century.This ambitious and original study explores the connections between aesthetic theory and political theory from the era of Romanticism to the twentieth century. David Kaiser traces these ideas through Schiller and Coleridge, Arnold, Mill and Ruskin, to Adorno and Habermas. He analyses the problems that contemporary literary theory faces in attempting to connect the aesthetic and political spheres, and suggests that we rethink the aesthetic sphere in order to regain that connection.This ambitious and original study explores the connections between aesthetic theory and political theory from the era of Romanticism to the twentieth century. David Kaiser traces these ideas through Schiller and Coleridge, Arnold, Mill and Ruskin, to Adorno and Habermas. He analyses the problems that contemporary literary theory faces in attempting to connect the aesthetic and political spheres, and suggests that we rethink the aesthetic sphere in order to regain that connection.This ambitious and original study explores the connections between aesthetic theory and political theory from the era of Romanticism to the twentieth century. David Kaiser traces these ideas through Schiller and Coleridge, Arnold, Mill and Ruskin, to Adorno and Habermas. He analyzes the problems that contemporary literary theory faces in attempting to connect the aesthetic and political spheres, and suggests that we rethink the aesthetic sphere in order to regain that connection.Introduction; 1. Modernity, subjectivity, liberalism, and nationalism; 2. The symbol and the aesthetic sphere; 3. Schiller's aesthetic state; 4. Symbol, state, and clerisy: the aesthetic politics of Coleridge; 5. The best self and the private self: Matthew Arnold on culture and the state; 6. Aesthetic kingship and queenship: Ruskin on the state and the home; 7. The aesthetic and political spheres in conls(