Delicate Subjects Romanticism, Gender, and the Ethics of Understanding

"There is no more romantic a tendency in contemporary critical theory, Julie Ellison asserts, than its emerging analysis of philosophical language as masculine and aggressive. Addressing the interrelated issues of the history of anxieties about rational violence and the significance of the feminine in romantic literature and theory, Ellison focuses on the works of three major writers -Schleiermacher, Coleridge, and Fuller- and on the 'delicate, ' and perennially challenging, subject of the function of gender in ethical discourse. Her book yields a fresh perspective on the importance of the romantic tradition for feminism and on the role of feminism in the current reevaluation of romanticism."--Back cover of paperback ed.