Postscript by way of an Introduction

Abstract

Although this discussion can usefully serve to introduce the reader to some of the salient features of a general argument about Romanticism contained in this book, it is, perhaps, more properly viewed as a postscript. That is, like most introductions, as I should surmise, it was written last and therefore has the character of a drawing together of threads and a retrospective viewing of the implications of the Romantic discourses here analysed, rather than of an introductory fanfare or provisional adumbration. It is no more a summation or substitute for the book than the book is a summation or substitute for the Romantic literature it discusses. If certain general propositions about Romantic literature are put forward here, they are offered as neither unproblematic nor exhaustive and they should be understood in relation to the analysis of particular genres that follows. If the reader will subsequently return to the beginning he will be in a position to understand rather better the issues to which this postscript as introduction addresses itself.