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Romancing Fascism: Modernity and Allegory in Benjamin, de Man, Shelley

This monograph addresses a critical impasse that developed in the area of literary/critical theory: the status of allegory in relation to time and history and to modernity itself. It comparatively analyses the oeuvres of Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man and Percy Bysshe Shelley to suggest a way forward for critical thinking involving a coalition between rational and allegorical approaches, achieved by combining Habermas’s view of modernity as an ‘unfinished project’ with de Man’s view of modernity being at odds with history. It has been reviewed as ‘thoroughly researched and densely argued’ and ‘a fine achievement’ by its two official reviewers.