After Romanticism

Independent scholar Eisenhauer points out that the similarities and links between American modernism and European romanticism are not as simple as they seem, and that their supposedly common ground shifts constantly and at almost every level, creating ironic difference and even fictive renegotiation of literary history. In five essays he brings the work of Capote to that of Novalis and Schlegel as an expression of Baroque mysticism, pulling in Shelley's Triumphe of Life for good measure. He further expands on Capote, the signifiers "Cristal and "crystal" and metahistory, then analyzes cinematic treatments of Rattigan's The Browning Version and their relationship to Aeschylus, Browning, Golding and Adorno as well as to the tyranny of "the same." Fellini's strange and far-reaching revision of a Poe story is his next subject, and he closes by examining the complexities of a translation of a poetic text by modernist Gertrude Stein. Annotation 穢2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)