Romanticism/Judaica

The twelve essays in Romanticism/Judaica explore the four major cultural strands that have converged from the French Revolution to the present. The first section Nationalism and Diasporeanism contains essays on the diasporean mentality of the Romantics Byron's attitude towards nationalism and Polish immigrant Hyman Hurwitz's attempt to gain acceptance among the British by having Coleridge translate his Hebrew elegy for Princess Charlotte. Essays of the second section Religion and Anti-Semitism deal with the complexities of Jewish/Christian relations in the Romantic Period. Specifically they discuss philosopher Solomon Maimon's lack of response to Kant's anti-Semitism novelist Maria Polack's use of Christian subject matter to combat anti-Semitism and short-story writer Grace Aguilar's incorporation of the British Bible-centered Evangelical culture along with various strands of British Romanticism. In the third section Individualism and Assimilationism essays consider different ways the Jews were assimilated into the dominant culture specifically through the theater sports and and post-Enlightenment philosophy. Finally the volume concludes with Criticism and Reflection: a revaluation of earlier scholarship on Anglo-Jewish literature; the establishment of Harold Fisch's covenantal hermeneutics as a model for reading Keats; and an analysis of Lionel Trilling M. H. Abrams Harold Bloom and Geoffrey Hartman in terms of their Jewish origins suggesting the further implications for Romanticism as a field.