Intellectual Politics and Cultural Conflict in the Romantic Period

Alex Benchimol is lecturer in the Department of English Literature at the University of Glasgow, UK

• Contents: Introduction: new sites of cultural conflict in the Romantic period; Cultural theory and the Habermasian public sphere; Cultural leadership in 'North Britain' and the making of the Scottish Enlightenment public sphere; Formations of popular English cultural politics and the making of the radical plebeian public sphere; Scottish philosophic Whiggism and Romantic cultural critique; post-Enlightenment intellectual politics in the Edinburgh Review; Radical Englishness in the Romantic period: intellectual leadership and popular cultural resistance in the plebeian public sphere; Afterword: national cultural history, cultural studies, and the Romantic public sphere; Selected bibliography; Index.

'This is an original contribution to an important field of study. The emphasis on conflicting national traditions sets this book apart from existing discussions of the Romantic public sphere.' Philip Shaw, University of Leicester, UK ’Benchimol’s study is a valuable contribution to the study of the Romantic public sphere and the competing role of national cultural formations in understanding Britain’s industrial modernity.’ The Year’s Work in English Studies '... this work is not simply a contrast of English and Scottish views, of Whig and Radical opinions, or even of differing class positions. Although, where appropriate, it discusses moments of conflict between members of each camp, Francis Jeffrey and William Cobbett for example, it is primarily involved in mapping out a far broader, multi-dimensional study of the way particular complex public spheres emerge and change over time in response to changing historical circumstances and to other competing equally complicated spheres.' Scottish Literary Review 'Intellectual Politics and Cultural Conflict in the Romantic Period extends theories of the Romantic public sphere into the Scottish Enlightenment and further into English plebeian radicalism. The critical turn that Benchimol considers is as revolutionary as the literature it analyses.' European Journal of English Studies 'Read alongside each other, as the structure of Benchimol’s book invites us to do, the two very different histories which form the subject of Intellectual Politics and Cultural Conflict in the Romantic Period constitute an eloquent and wide-ranging assessment of both the extraordinary complexity and the enduring influence of these two very different struggles to forge a post-Enlightenment vision at the limits of convention definitions of the public sphere. Benchimol’s insights could not have been more timely.' BARS Bulletin and Review