Poetry and Philosophy from Homer to Rousseau: Romantic Souls, Realist Lives

by S. Haines

Overview

This accessible and jargon-free book features readings of over 20 key texts and authors in Western poetry and philosophy, including Homer, Plato, Beowulf, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rousseau. Simon Haines presents a thought-provoking and theoretically aware account of Western literature and philosophy, arguing that the history of both can be seen as a struggle between two different conceptions of the self: the 'romantic' (or dualist) vs the 'realist' or ('extended').

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349522415
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2005
Edition description:	1st ed. 2005
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

SIMON HAINES is a member of the English Department in the School of Humanities at the Australian National University, Australia. He has also been a banker, a diplomat and an intelligence analyst. He is the author of Shelley's Poetry: The Divided Self (Macmillan, 1997) and a number of articles on poetry (especially Romantic and post-Romantic), and the connections between poetry and philosophy (especially moral and political philosophy).

Table of Contents

Introduction Homer: Passion in the Iliad Sophocles' Antigone and Thucydides' Athens: Romanticism and Realism in Politics Plato and Aristotle: Concept and Passion The Inheritance of Augustine: Confessions Aquinas and the Realist Revival Dante and Medieval Romanticism Renaissance, Reformation and Shakespeare's Realism Romanticism from Descartes to Rousseau Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

'...this is a hugely impressive book - vast in scope and conception, powerful in execution and...meticulous in detail and reference.' - Stephen Prickett, Regius Professor Emeritus of English, Glasgow University

From the Publisher