Romantic Affinities

About this book

Set against the hopes and dreams inspired by the French Revolution the disillusion caused by its failure and the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars that followed Rupert Christiansen draws the threads into narrative. Ranging over politics art music and using the voices of celebrated Romantic poets such as Wordsworth Coleridge Shelley Byron Goethe and Pushkin as well as the less familiar Chenier Holderlin Hoffmann and de Stael he recreates one of the most fascinating and complex periods of modern history and offers fresh perspectives on its literature and culture.