Abstract

In this dissertation, the topics of the Enlightenment, the failure of revolution, the critique of Enlightenment, and the sublimation of the political into the aesthetic are examined, as they pertain to the historical developments of Romanticism, Critical Theory, and Post-Structuralism. Beginning with a discussion of Romanticism and establishing this discussion as the paradigm for the subsequent discussions of Critical Theory and Post-Structuralism, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate that certain aspects of Critical Theory and Post-Structuralism could be regarded as neo-Romantic. Early British Romanticism is discussed in chapter one and then compared to Critical Theory in chapter two and to Post-Structuralism in chapter three. This dissertation attempts to provide a perspective from which some of the similarities and parallels between Romanticism, Critical Theory, and Post-Structuralism can be seen more clearly