the romantic agony

In this seminal work, originally published in Italian as 'La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica' in 1933 and translated into English in 1934 by Angus Davidson, Mario Praz explores the dark undercurrents of Romanticism, including eroticism, death, Satanism, and the grotesque.

He traces these motifs through the works of key authors like Byron, Shelley, Keats, and others, as well as painters such as Delacroix and Moreau, revealing the decadent imagination's fascination with horror, sin, and the supernatural.

Praz's encyclopedic analysis connects Renaissance sensibilities to 19th-century bourgeois deviance, offering an indispensable guide to understanding modern literature's roots.