LITTERARIA PRAGENSIA
Studies in Literature and Culture

Romantic Shock and Surprise

The “shock of the new” is a phrase normally associated with Modernism but the aesthetics of shock has its roots in Romanticism, where notions of originality, novelty and surprise combined with the concept of the sublime to create compelling new descriptions of art’s disruptive powers. This special issue, guest edited by David Duff (Queen Mary University of London) and Laurent Folliot (Sorbonne Université) is based on an international symposium held in Paris in May 2025; it assesses the impact of this new cultural poetics, examining manifestations of aesthetic shock and surprise across a broad spectrum of Romantic literature from Britain and beyond.

Cover Design: Karolína Bendová
Cover Image: Johann Heinrich Füssli, Lady Macbeth somnambule (Shakespeare, Macbeth), © GrandPalaisRmn (musée du Louvre) / Hervé Lewandowski