Customer Reviews

Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

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A classic read. A great scholarly addition to imperialism. Relates Romanticism to modern imperialism and capitalism, extensive scholarly articles have touched upon the same fact. It was a "cultural revolution" during the Romantic period.

An immensely useful book by a brilliant and independent writer. To understand Makdisi is to understand what is most importantly going on in today's cultural-political discourse.

Saree Makdisi is indeed one of the most influential voices of 21st Century cultural-political discourse. His essay on the Universal Empire is a masterpiece.

When you actually penetrate the rosy jargon, you find no real meaning, just empty pearls. The chapters spin by based on Wordsworth's concept of "spot of time" but the concept itself fails to justify all the time spent on showing Byronic theatrics with simplistic, hedonistic, flippant care. Time is the central theme of the book but no effort is made to actually deal with the timing of the verses themselves in the terms that the poets themselves used them. The author just glosses over time in its specificity and rests his argument on superficial observations based on the political context of the time. No mention is made of the religious and spiritual pathways that time is given in these verses despite the cover's religious imagery.