Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Despotism of liberty: Robespierre and the illusion of politics; 2. The politics of confession in Rousseau and Robespierre; 3. Chivalry, justice and the law in William Godwin's Caleb Williams; 4. 'The Prometheus of Sentiment': Rousseau, Wollstonecraft and aesthetic education; 5. Strangling the infant Hercules: Malthus and the population controversy; 6. 'The virtue of one paramount mind': Wordsworth and the politics of the mountain; 7. 'Sour Jacobinism': William Hazlitt and the resistance to reform; Bibliography.

Promotional Information

Re-examines Rousseau's influence on French Revolution and English Romanticism, through the mediating figure of Robespierre.

Reviews

"...Dart's discussion of each of these writers is valuable..." Michael Wiley, The Wordsworth Circle ...unique insight into Rousseau and the period." Choice "This recent book by Gregory Dart is a well-informed and intelligently executed account of the impact of Rousseau's thought upon British romanticism... Rousseau, Robespirre, and Romanticism is a valuable, highly readable addition to romantic scholarship, a text that future analysts of the intersections of politics and literature in the age of romanticism would do well to read with care. Alertly attentive to the texts it reads, it sketches with considerable success the highly important process of Rousseau's assimilation into the political life of England in the post-revolutionary era." Stidies in Romanticism, 40 (Summer 01)