Introduction

Romantic criticism has long been theoretically sophisticated: over the past twenty years it has represented the peak of applied deconstructive and poststructuralist critical practice. With its classic expressions of individualism Romantic literature offered itself as a prime site for deconstruction's rigorous questioning of self-presence. In the wake of Paul de Man and the high point of deconstruction, Romantic critics on both sides of the Atlantic have now turned to new methodologies: theories of audience, genre, the new historicisms; and, as with deconstruction, have made them their own. Recent interest in political economy and the sublime represents a return to old areas of enquiry, but with new poststructuralist horizons. More recently, the bicentenary of the French revolution has provided an invaluable opportunity for Romantic criticism to put its new-found historical pretensions to the test, and to sound out the usefulness of the new historicisms.