"The Rhine: National tensions, Romantic visions" now out
Edited by Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen, and the fruit of a series of SPIN workshops, the book has appeared in Brill’s European Studies series. One of the first English-langage historical surveys of the transnational, especially German-French entanglements and confrontations over this European geographical and cultural core region, brings together eminent literary and cultural specialists and present materials and analyses from various perspectives – literature, tourism, heritage, geopolitics.
Of all European landscapes and regions, the Rhine is one of the most heavily overlaid with cultural and political meaning. Cradle of Romanticism, tourism, and the picturesque, bone of contention between the German and French spheres of cultural and geopolitical influence, the Rhine has attracted armies, artists, activists and tourists for centuries and has featured prominently the key writings of Europe’s literary and intellectual history from Byron to Lucien Febvre.
The volume also contains a unique and comprehensive anthology of key texts (historical, poetical and polemical) related to the Rhineland and its contested position. More information here.