Translated by Gervase Hittle, this is the first English translation of Lamartine's meditation poetiques which influenced French literature by its exploration of literary forms, its close relationship to the nature from which it proceeds and toward which it constantly refers. This work opens vistas upon the European Romantic Movement. Notes and commentaries offer the reader explanations of language and stylistic problems and assist the reader in developing interpretations and understanding cultural variety. The facing page format provides a ready reference for both the novice student of French literature and the Lamartine scholar.

The deepest words are the most prosaic. They are enriched by everybody's voice, and only through them are our joys, sufferings, doubts, and choices illuminated and shared. This book's brief meditations lend an ear to ten of them, from breath to wound, from way to abandonment, from attention to peace. The lesson of poets, the wisdom of saints, and the teaching of philosophers with these simple words afford innumerable pathways. To gather ourselves, letting the weight of these essential words sink into us, is to catch our breath silently, rendering its rhythm fuller and stronger. Yet what is the point, if we were to stand pat? The price of the highest breath can only be to give itself without reserve, until we lose our breath. A contribution to the venerable tradition of lectio divina, Ten Meditations for Catching and Losing One's Breath invites its reader to embark on a contemplative journey led by an author who was one of France's most prolific and profound philosophers in generations.

The Romantic period coincided with revolutionary transformations of traditional political and human rights discourses, as well as witnessing rapid advances in technology and a primitivist return to nature. As a broad global movement, Romanticism strongly impacted on the literature and arts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in ways that are still being debated and negotiated today. Examining the poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, and the arts of the period, this book considers: Important propositions and landmark ideas in the Romantic period; Key debates and critical approaches to Romantic studies; New and revisionary approaches to Romantic literature and art; The ways in which Romantic writing interacts with broader trends in history, politics, and aesthetics; European and Global Romanticism; The legacies of Romanticism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Containing useful, reader-friendly features such as explanatory case studies, chapter summaries, and suggestions for further reading, this clear and engaging book is an invaluable resource for anyone who intends to study and research the complexity and diversity of the Romantic period, as well as the historical conditions which produced it.