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The Myth and Identity of the Romantic Artist in European Literature - Elena Anastasaki

The Myth and Identity of the Romantic Artist in European Literature

A Self-Constructed Fantasy
Buch | Softcover
222 Seiten
2024
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-032-31414-3 (ISBN)
CHF 69,80 inkl. MwSt
This study in comparative literature contributes to the understanding of the myth of the artist as a European cultural construct and investigates the processes of personal mythmaking. The construction of romantic identity is studied in an interdisciplinary perspective, insisting on the strategies employed to produce a typology of the artist
This study addresses the question of artistic identity and the myth of the artist as it has been shaped by the artists themselves. While the term artist is to be understood in a broad sense, the focus of this study is the literature of the Romantic tradition. Identity is largely perceived as a construct, and a central hypothesis of this book concerns its aesthetic value and the ways it creates dominant narratives of self-perception that produce powerful myths.

The construction of the artist’s identity, be it collective or personal, rests on a series of aesthetic praxes. Caught between the mythic idealisation of poetic genius and its social devaluation, the Romantic artist seeks to create a place for himself, and in doing so, he engages in his own mythmaking. This process is studied in an interdisciplinary perspective, approaching texts and writers from different traditions. The study analyses various typologies of the artist, numerous mythmaking strategies as well as several postural techniques; all of which have sketched major direct or indirect fictional self-portraits in the European tradition.

Elena Anastasaki is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the Department of Language and Intercultural Studies at the University of Thessaly (Greece). She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the Universities of Kent and Paris 8.

Acknowledgments

Notes on Translation

Introduction






Overview of the Background Scene



Outline of Approach, Key Concepts and Methodology



Book Structure

Part One

Chapter 1, Forming Identity: An Interdisciplinary Approach






Ethos and the Image of the Author



Narrative and Identity Theories: Narrating the Self, an Ontological Dilemma



Identity and Aesthetics





Kant, Schiller, and Romantic Aesthetics



Chapter 2, The Making of Artistic Genius








A philosophical Concept



The Figure of Chatterton





Coleridge’s Chatterton: A Life-long Companion



Alfred de Vigny’s Chatterton: The Emblem of a Social Cause





Chapter 3, Goethe’s Prometheus, Rousseau’s Pygmalion, and their Progeny








"Here sit I, forming mortals / After my image": The Promethean Artist





Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Prometheus"



Lord Byron, "Ode to Prometheus"



Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound



Victor Hugo, "Genius," "The grieving poem weeps"



Théophile Gautier, "On the Prometheus of Madrid"




Pygmalion and the Ontological Status of the Work of Art





Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pygmalion



Thomas Lovell Beddoes, "Pygmalion, or the Cyprian Statuary"





Part Two

Chapter 4, "Now, if I know myself, I should say, that I have no character at all"–Byron’s Mythmaking Strategies








The Quest for a Personal Voice



The Poet’s Physical Appearance



The Poet as Pilgrim: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage



Poetic Ventriloquism: The Lament of Tasso and The Prophecy of Dante



Byron’s Public Persona



Chapter 5, Percy Shelley and the Metaphysical Authenticity of the Poet








Alastor, or The Adventures of the Poetic Mind



From Aesthetic Experience to the Aesthetic Self



Adonais, or the Self from Without – Pivotal Moments of Self Awareness



From Poet to Poet: "To Wordsworth" and "Lines to __" ("Sonnet to Byron")



Chapter 6, Honoré de Balzac, the Napoleon of Letters








"[L]a tête dans le ciel et les pieds sur cette terre" – Balzac’s Fictional Artists





The Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man



The Artist as Martyr




Sympathetic Parody: Grotesque and Sublime Identities





The Bourgeois Artist





Chapter 7, Théophile Gautier, Stylistic Identity and Poetic Time








The Negation of the Self: Les Jeunes-France



The Golden Fleece: A Quest for Rubens’ Blonds, or How Art Spoils Reality



Autobiographic Sketches and the Poet as Shapeshifter



Conclusion, A Sociopoetical Approach to Genius








Materialistic Representations of Genius



The Poet’s Two Bodies



Napoleon



Artistic Identity as a Narrative Construct in a European Context



Works Cited and Consulted

Erscheinungsdatum
Reihe/Serie Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature
Verlagsort London
Sprache englisch
Maße 152 x 229 mm
Gewicht 453 g
Themenwelt Kunst / Musik / Theater Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10 1-032-31414-1 / 1032314141
ISBN-13 978-1-032-31414-3 / 9781032314143
Zustand Neuware
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