Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots, and Revolutionaries, 1776-1871

The “Age of Revolutions”, which began in France in 1789 and culminated in the universal explosion of 1848, transformed the nature of politics. The Romantic movement in literature, art and music transformed the West’s outlook and system of values. The connection between the two is, the author argues, crucial to an understanding of the modern world, for, in his opinion, it reveals how those revolutions were made, and why most of them ended in failure. He also argues that the connection explains where most of the accepted pieties of modern social and political life come from, and that it has left us with all that is most terrifying in modern life, from genocide to political correctness. Concentrating not on dogma, but rather on the people who led the historical and cultural phenomena that were the “Age of Revolutions” and the Romantic movement, this book examines how the hearts and minds of key figures and of the masses alike were conditioned by cultural factors.