Romanticism and the Heritage of Rousseau

Romanticism and the Heritage of Rousseau presents a timely and thorough-going critique of recent thinking on Romanticism.

Beginning from the conviction that Rousseau may well have been the most important cultural figure of the last quarter millennium, Thomas McFarland confronts the misplaced emphases and serious misreadings of recent new historicist, post-structuralist, and feminist Romantic criticism.

Using Rousseau as a guide and influence, McFarland tackles head-on the work of six important scholars - including Jerome McGann, Marilyn Butler, and Paul de Man - and argues that the 'new orthodoxy' is signally unable to perform the ultimate task of criticism: to discern quality. In its place, McFarland advocates an attention to the 'texture' of the cultural fabric of Romanticism, in order to restore our sense of what Romanticism is, and to allow us to hear again the plangency of its distinctive voice.