1790 - Border and Freedom in Literature

The volume presents the critical period in the emergence of modern Europe based on the analysis of literary works written during a fateful year. The intellectuals of the time were then forced to confront the antagonism of principles and practice, ideals and reality for the first time. The successful but naive optimism of the French Enlightenment, its belief in the spread of rationality and social progress, was called into question by the French Revolution of 1789 and its consequences, and the situation was further aggravated by the unscrupulous violation of national interests. The writers' reaction to political conditions is universal: what does it mean to break down the boundaries of a (political) system, what is "access to freedom", and what can happen after that?