The romantic virtuoso

Morse Peckham's reputation as an expert on European Romanticism was founded on a distinguished academic career that spanned four decades. Completed shortly before his death in 1993, The Romantic Virtuoso, which includes the long-awaited Meditations on the Consequences of Romanticism, demonstrates Peckham's breath-taking interdisciplinary grasp, writing of individuals and their intellectual relationships as well as the historical context of the whole romantic movement. Equally at home with Beethoven and Rossini, Turner and Constable, Hegel and Schopenhauer, or Byron and Keats, he interweaves discussions of music, literature, philosophy, and the visual arts into a tapestry that presents a comprehensive reinterpretation of romanticism in terms of its cultural history. By tracing the ramifications of romanticism as well as its themes, Peckham reestablishes the historical roots of postmodernism and clarifies the continuity of concerns through the nineteenth century and up to the present.