The Extravagant

". . . Baker sees modernity as a dialectical struggle between increasingly organized instrumental societies and constructive, energetic, and creative negativity." -Religious Studies Review

". . . Baker is surely right to see a kind of displaced religious longing behind many of these writers. . . Scholars looking for common themes uniting Romanticism and now-fading postmodernity will find a support here. . . " -Choice

"The Extravagant is a fascinating and ambitious study of the interplay between philosophy and poetry in the modern period." -The Virginia Quarterly Review

". . . The Extravagant is an engaging book that will have many admirers among the ever-widening circle of 'religionists without religion.' It makes a good case for the continuity of romantic and modernist poetics despite the clear break between expressivism and constructivism in twentieth-century theory and practice." -Christianity and Literature

" . . . his richly erudite, lucidly intelligent, and beautifully written book is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand and reflect on the trajectory of modern culture." -Notre Dame Philosophical Review

"Baker locates the origin of this 'extravagant' wandering not in the Homeric plot of return to a lost household, but rather in the Biblical theme of 'crossing' over or through to a new heaven or a new earth, and in the desire to make all things new . . . Baker further argues that the major 20th-century philosophers in the Continental tradition have been inspired by these 'extravagant' poets; as a result there has been a remarkable 'interanimation' between poetry and philosophy in our time." -The Heythrop Journal

"In conclusion, and in good extravagant fashion, I'll say this: Baker's book is absolutely fascinating, interesting, and compelling, in spite of its forcing the reader to wander almost to exhaustion-but then such is the nature of both the extravagant and the negative." -Hyperion

"Robert Baker's The Extravagant: Crossings of Modern Poetry and Modern Philosophy deals boldly and brilliantly with its titular subjects as ways of exploring perhaps arbitrating lofty, even ultimate issues. . . . This structure is intriguing, but even more impressive is Baker's command of his voluminous and difficult subject matter." -The Georgia Review

"Baker's great strengths-apart from the scale and urgency of his wonderfully conceived topic-are his prodigious learning, his luminous intelligence, and his probing diagnostic vision. He has a truly remarkable capacity to move scrupulously and profoundly between poetry and philosophical thought." -Peter Sacks, Harvard University

"This is an outstanding book about the inter-relations between poetry and philosophy. It's splendidly written, impressively argued and genuinely original. I read it with great admiration." -Mark W. Edmundson, University of Virginia