Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008 A Half-Century of Greatness paints a vivid and dramatic picture of the creative thought of mid- to late nineteenth century Europe and the influence of the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848. It reveals often unexpected links between novelists, poets, and philosophers from England, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine-especially Dickens, Carlyle, Mill, the Brontes, and George Eliot; Hegel, Strauss, Feuerbach, Marx, Engels, Wagner, and several German poets; the Hungarian poet Sandor Petoefi; Gogol, Dostoevsky, Bakunin, and Herzen in Russia, and the great Ukrainian poet Shevchenko. Ewen goes on to trace the transition from Romanticism to Victorianism, or what he calls "the Victorian compromise"-the ascendancy of the middle class. The book was reconstructed and edited by Dr. Jeffrey Wollock from Ewen's final manuscript. It includes the author's own reference citations throughout, a reconstructed bibliography, and an updated "further reading" list. This is Ewen's last work, the long-lost companion to his Heroic Imagination. Together, these books present a panorama of the social, political, and artistic aspects of European Romanticism, especially foreshadowing and complementing recent work on the relation of Marxism to romanticism. Anyone interested in what Lukacs called "Romantic anticapitalism,"; who appreciates such books as Marshall Berman's Adventures in Marxism or E.P. Thompson's The Romantics (1997), will find Ewen's work a welcome addition.
Editor's Introduction Foreword by Aaron KramerPart I: England at the Great Divide:1830-1848 1 The Battle for Reform2 The Battle for Minds and Secular Salvation: "Utopia" and "Utility" 3 Thomas Carlyle: Out of the "Nay" into the "Everlasting Yea"4 Charles Dickens: The Novel in "The Battle of Life" 5 John Stuart Mill: The Majesty of Reason Part II: Russia: Dark Laughter and SiberiaNikolay Gogol and Young Dostoevsky1 The Dark Laughter of Nikolay Gogol 2 Young Dostoevsky: The Road to Siberia Part III: Europe: Revolution 1848-1849 1 The Lightning of Ideas: Reason and Revolution 1835-1848 2 Revolution:1848-1849 3 The Lyre and the Sword: Art and Revolution Part IV: Swan Song and Elegy: Germany and the Poets Part V: England: Crystal Palace and Bleak House Part VI: Woman of Valor: George Eliot and the Victorians Notes Bibliography Primary SourcesSecondary SourcesFurther Reading for Heroic Imagination and A Half-Century of Greatness Index
