From Progress to Catastrophe
Perry Anderson: The Historical Novel, 28 July 2011
“... on, but then skirts. The historical novel – if we except its one great precursor, Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas – is a product of romantic nationalism. This is as true of Tolstoy as it is of Scott, Cooper, Manzoni, Galdós, Jókai, Sienkiewicz or so many others. The original matrix of this nationalism was the European reaction against Napoleonic ... ”