Beyond The Tragic Vision: The Quest For Identity In The Nineteenth Century
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Fair - Bumping on spine and corners. Rubbed edges.
A landmark work of intellectual and cultural history, Beyond the Tragic Vision: The Quest for Identity in the Nineteenth Century presents a sweeping reinterpretation of Romanticism and its aftermath, arguing that the defining struggle of the nineteenth century was humanity's search for a stable sense of self in the wake of collapsing religious and metaphysical certainties. Morse Peckham traces this crisis of identity through an ambitious range of figures—poets, painters, philosophers, and novelists—illustrating how each grappled with the failure of inherited value systems and the need to construct new ones. Written with intellectual rigor and a boldly provocative tone, the work challenges conventional literary and cultural periodization, insisting that Romanticism was not a discrete movement but a continuous, evolving response to modernity. Peckham's analysis is dense and demanding, rewarding readers who engage seriously with his thesis that art and culture function as laboratories for testing new orientations toward existence. This remains an essential text for scholars and serious students of nineteenth-century literature, philosophy, and the history of ideas.
Author: Morse Peckham
Format: Hardback
Published: 1962, George Braziller
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Fair - Bumping on spine and corners. Rubbed edges.
A landmark work of intellectual and cultural history, Beyond the Tragic Vision: The Quest for Identity in the Nineteenth Century presents a sweeping reinterpretation of Romanticism and its aftermath, arguing that the defining struggle of the nineteenth century was humanity's search for a stable sense of self in the wake of collapsing religious and metaphysical certainties. Morse Peckham traces this crisis of identity through an ambitious range of figures—poets, painters, philosophers, and novelists—illustrating how each grappled with the failure of inherited value systems and the need to construct new ones. Written with intellectual rigor and a boldly provocative tone, the work challenges conventional literary and cultural periodization, insisting that Romanticism was not a discrete movement but a continuous, evolving response to modernity. Peckham's analysis is dense and demanding, rewarding readers who engage seriously with his thesis that art and culture function as laboratories for testing new orientations toward existence. This remains an essential text for scholars and serious students of nineteenth-century literature, philosophy, and the history of ideas.