A Degenerate World - Translated by Tristan Korecki- Edited by Elena Rozbicka

Modernism and pessimism seem to go hand in hand. What are the sources of the historical pessimism we see in the legions of writers and thinkers over the past three centuries who saw modern civilization as degenerate and despicable, happily marching to its own doom? Why did so many educated and intelligent people despise the innovations that were the work of their contemporaries? This book focuses on English and Polish thought during the 19th and early 20th centuries, a time of relative political stability and great success in science and industry, when many nevertheless voiced concern that Europe is moving in the wrong direction, to its own destruction. After WWI, these warnings became even more dire and have left their mark on the European culture of our times.

List of contents

Contents: Degeneration - Degenerate - Modernity - Decline of civilisation - Darwinism - Crisis - Victorian Era - Edwardian Era - Fin de Siècle - Turn of the century - City on trial - Industrial cities - Progress - Eugenics - Post-Enlightenment - Science Fiction - Mechanical Age - Romanticism - Railways - Steam Age - The West.

About the author

Jerzy Jedlicki is Professor emeritus at the Institute of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences where he headed the research group for the history of the intelligentsia. He also was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. in 1989�. His expertise is European social and intellectual history of the 18th�th c.

Product details

• Authors: Jerzy Jedlicki
• Assisted by: Elena Rozbicka (Editor), Anna Wolff-Poweska (Editor), Tristan Korecki (Translation)
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2016
• EAN: 9783631642870
• ISBN: 978-3-631-64287-0
• No. of pages: 207
• Dimensions: 172 mm x 17 mm x 211 mm
• Weight: 370 g
• Series: Geschichte - Erinnerung - Politik; Geschichte - Erinnerung - Politik. Studies in History, Memory and Politics; Geschichte - Erinnerung - Politik; Geschichte - Erinnerung - Politik. Studies in History, Memory and Politics; Studies in History, Memory and Politics; Geschichte ¿ Erinnerung ¿ Politik. Studies in History, Memory and Politics
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries