A bestselling author in his own time and long after, Sir Walter Scott was not only a writer of thrilling tales of romance and adventure but also an insightful historical thinker and literary craftsman. Over the last two decades, scholars have come to see him as an important figure in Romantic-period literature, Scottish literature and the development of the historical novel. Walter Scott and Contemporary Theory builds on this renewed appreciation of Scott's importance by viewing his most significant novels - from Waverley and Rob Royto Ivanhoe,Redgauntlet, and beyond - through the lens of contemporary critical theory. By juxtaposing pairings of Scott's early and later novels with major contemporary theoretical concepts and the work of such thinkers as Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Zizek, this book uses theory to illuminate the complexities of Scott's fictions, while simultaneously using Scott's fictions to explain and explore the state of contemporary theory.

Revising traditional 'rise of the nation-state' narratives, this collection explores the development of and interactions among various forms of local, national, and transnational identities and affiliations during the long eighteenth century. By treating place as historically contingent and socially constructed, this volume examines how Britons experienced and related to a landscape altered by agricultural and industrial modernization, political and religious reform, migration, and the building of nascent overseas empires. In mapping the literary and cultural geographies of the long eighteenth century, the volume poses three challenges to common critical assumptions about the relationships among genre, place, and periodization. First, it questions the novel's exclusive hold on the imagining of national communities by examining how poetry, drama, travel-writing, and various forms of prose fiction each negotiated the relationships between the local, national, and global in distinct ways. Second, it demonstrates how viewing the literature and culture of the long eighteenth century through a broadly conceived lens of place brings to the foreground authors typically considered 'minor' when seen through more traditional aesthetic, cultural, or theoretical optics. Finally, it contextualizes Romanticism's long-standing associations with the local and the particular, suggesting that literary localism did not originate in the Romantic era, but instead emerged from previous literary and cultural explorations of space and place. Taken together, the essays work to displace the nation-state as a central category of literary and cultural analysis in eighteenth-century studies.

Revising traditional 'rise of the nation-state' narratives, this collection explores the development of and interactions among various forms of local, national, and transnational identities and affiliations during the long eighteenth century. By treating place as historically contingent and socially constructed, this volume examines how Britons experienced and related to a landscape altered by agricultural and industrial modernization, political and religious reform, migration, and the building of nascent overseas empires. In mapping the literary and cultural geographies of the long eighteenth century, the volume poses three challenges to common critical assumptions about the relationships among genre, place, and periodization. First, it questions the novel's exclusive hold on the imagining of national communities by examining how poetry, drama, travel-writing, and various forms of prose fiction each negotiated the relationships between the local, national, and global in distinct ways. Second, it demonstrates how viewing the literature and culture of the long eighteenth century through a broadly conceived lens of place brings to the foreground authors typically considered 'minor' when seen through more traditional aesthetic, cultural, or theoretical optics. Finally, it contextualizes Romanticism's long-standing associations with the local and the particular, suggesting that literary localism did not originate in the Romantic era, but instead emerged from previous literary and cultural explorations of space and place. Taken together, the essays work to displace the nation-state as a central category of literary and cultural analysis in eighteenth-century studies.

Engagements with Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory is a wide-ranging but accessible introduction to the key thinkers and theories integral to the study of literature. Organized thematically, the book provides historical introductions and uses a variety of relevant contemporary examples to illuminate the field. Evan Gottlieb contextualizes the latest developments with regard to forms; discourses; subjectivities and embodiments; media, networks, and machines; and animals, affects, objects, and environments. Each chapter elucidates its concepts through in-depth discussions of major contemporary theorists, including Giorgio Agamben, Sara Ahmed, and Catherine Malabou, and uses engaging examples from a canonical novel, a contemporary text, and a new-media artifact to demonstrate theoretical applications. Additional text boxes regularly introduce emerging or overlooked theorists of interest, including Fred Moten and Sianne Ngai. An ideal guide for students of literary and critical theory, this book will give readers the background they need to continue their own explorations of this vibrant field of study.

Engagements with Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory is a wide-ranging but accessible introduction to the key thinkers and theories integral to the study of literature. Organized thematically, the book provides historical introductions and uses a variety of relevant contemporary examples to illuminate the field. Evan Gottlieb contextualizes the latest developments with regard to forms; discourses; subjectivities and embodiments; media, networks, and machines; and animals, affects, objects, and environments. Each chapter elucidates its concepts through in-depth discussions of major contemporary theorists, including Giorgio Agamben, Sara Ahmed, and Catherine Malabou, and uses engaging examples from a canonical novel, a contemporary text, and a new-media artifact to demonstrate theoretical applications. Additional text boxes regularly introduce emerging or overlooked theorists of interest, including Fred Moten and Sianne Ngai. An ideal guide for students of literary and critical theory, this book will give readers the background they need to continue their own explorations of this vibrant field of study.

During the last half of the eighteenth century, sensibility and its less celebrated corollary sense were subject to constant variation, critique, and contestation in ways that raise profound questions about the formation of moral identities and communities. Beyond Sense and Sensibility addresses those questions. What authority does reason retain as a moral faculty in an age of sensibility? How reliable or desirable is feeling as a moral guide or a test of character? How does such a focus contribute to moral isolation and elitism or, conversely, social connectedness and inclusion? How can we distinguish between that connectedness and a disciplinary socialization? How do insensible processes contribute to our moral formation and action? What alternatives lie beyond the anthropomorphism implied by sense and sensibility? Drawing extensively on philosophical thought from the eighteenth century as well as conceptual frameworks developed in the twenty-first century, this volume of essays examines moral formation represented in or implicitly produced by a range of texts, including Boswell's literary criticism, Fergusson's poetry, Burney's novels, Doddridge's biography, Smollett's novels, Charlotte Smith's children's books, Johnson's essays, Gibbon's history, and Wordsworth's poetry. The distinctive conceptual and textual breadth of Beyond Sense and Sensibility yields a rich reassessment and augmentation of the two perspectives summarized by the terms sense and sensibility in later eighteenth-century Britain.

For several decades, interest in the British Romantics' theorizations and representations of the world beyond their national borders has been guided by postcolonial and, more recently, transatlantic paradigms. Global Romanticism: Origins, Orientations, and Engagements, 1760-1820 charts a new intellectual course by exploring the literature and culture of the Romantic era through the lens of long-durational globalization. In a series of wide-ranging but complementary chapters, this provocative collection of essays by established scholars makes the case that many British Romantics were committed to conceptualizing their world as an increasingly interconnected whole. In doing so, moreover, they were both responding to and shaping early modern versions of the transnational economic, political, sociocultural, and ecological forces known today as globalization.

Speculative realism is one of the most exciting, influential and controversial new branches of philosophy to emerge in recent years. Now, Evan Gottlieb shows that the speculative realism movement bears striking a resemblance to the ideas and beliefs of the best-known British poets of the Romantic era. Romantic Realities analyses the parallels and echoes between the ideas of the most influential contemporary practitioners of speculative realism and the poetry and poetics of the most innovative Romantic poets. In doing so, it introduces you to the intellectual precedents and contemporary stakes of speculative realism, together with new understandings of the philosophical underpinnings and far-reaching insights of British Romanticism. Readings include: The poetry and poetics of Wordsworth in relation to Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology and Timothy Morton's dark ecology Coleridge's poems and ideas in relation to Ray Brassier's philosophical nihilism and Iain Hamilton Grant's revisionist readings of Schelling Shelley's oeuvre in relation to Quentin Meillassoux's radical immanentism and Manuel DeLanda's process ontology Byron's best-known poems in relation to Alain Badiou's truth procedures and Bruno Latour's actor-network-theory Keats' oeuvre in relation to Levi Bryant's onticology and Ian Bogost's alien phenomenology

Speculative realism is one of the most exciting, influential and controversial new branches of philosophy to emerge in recent years. Now, Evan Gottlieb shows that the speculative realism movement bears striking a resemblance to the ideas and beliefs of the best-known British poets of the Romantic era. Romantic Realities analyses the parallels and echoes between the ideas of the most influential contemporary practitioners of speculative realism and the poetry and poetics of the most innovative Romantic poets. In doing so, it introduces you to the intellectual precedents and contemporary stakes of speculative realism, together with new understandings of the philosophical underpinnings and far-reaching insights of British Romanticism. Readings include: The poetry and poetics of Wordsworth in relation to Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology and Timothy Morton's dark ecology Coleridge's poems and ideas in relation to Ray Brassier's philosophical nihilism and Iain Hamilton Grant's revisionist readings of Schelling Shelley's oeuvre in relation to Quentin Meillassoux's radical immanentism and Manuel DeLanda's process ontology Byron's best-known poems in relation to Alain Badiou's truth procedures and Bruno Latour's actor-network-theory Keats' oeuvre in relation to Levi Bryant's onticology and Ian Bogost's alien phenomenology

A bestselling author in his own time and long after, Sir Walter Scott was not only a writer of thrilling tales of romance and adventure but also an insightful historical thinker and literary craftsman. Over the last two decades, scholars have come to see him as an important figure in Romantic-period literature, Scottish literature and the development of the historical novel. Walter Scott and Contemporary Theory builds on this renewed appreciation of Scott's importance by viewing his most significant novels - from Waverley and Rob Royto Ivanhoe,Redgauntlet, and beyond - through the lens of contemporary critical theory. By juxtaposing pairings of Scott's early and later novels with major contemporary theoretical concepts and the work of such thinkers as Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Zizek, this book uses theory to illuminate the complexities of Scott's fictions, while simultaneously using Scott's fictions to explain and explore the state of contemporary theory.