TY - JOUR
AB - This collection of essays, originally gathered for workshops held by the American Society for the Study of Romanticism, starts out from the common viewpoint that Romanticism continues into Modernity rather than being a discrete epoch. Like other volumes before it, this one also regards Romanticism as a transitional phase, arguing that its tropes and discourses at once foreshadow and criticize the concepts of Modernity. However, the present volume adds a German slant to the English-language discourse on Romanticism, bringing into play the foremost German thinkers of the period and contrasting popular German versions of Romantic genres, such as the novella and the Bildungsroman, with popular English genres of the period, such as the essay and the long poem. In particular, it focuses on ‘form’ and its ambivalent Romantic perceptions—is it an ontological given, or is it an historical fabrication? The collection starts off with David Wellbery’s splendid discussion of the endogenous model of ‘form’ as introduced in Goethe’s Bildung narratives and articulated in Kant’s philosophy. The topic is continued in Joan Steigerwald’s essay on Kant’s concepts of teleological and aesthetic judgements. The relationship of literary form to science and philosophy is the subject of Tilottama Rajan’s piece on Schelling’s notions of philosophical and scientific knowledge, which argues that Schelling’s work provides early examples of the Modernist concept of the non-organic, volatile and polyvalent form—which discourages us from identifying Romanticism with organic forms only. The next three essays discuss the aesthetics of Romanticism: the narratives of secularization and anxieties about divine excess in Wordsworth’s Prelude; the unmasking of abstract utopianism in Wordsworth’s ‘The Female Vagrant’; and the continuation of Kant’s ideas on nature’s ‘purposiveness without a purpose’ in Schelling’s, Hegel’s and Heine’s Romantic theories of art. The next four essays analyse Romantic genres: Denise Gigante’s piece considers the English ‘essay’ as an organic and spontaneous genre meant to trigger ideas rather than set finite and encyclopaedic truths into stone; Thomas Pfau challenges teleological readings of the Bildungsroman by exploring play, instantaneity and experimentation in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister; Nicholas Halmi concentrates on how Byron inhabits the epic-length poem, which had lost its historical currency; and Fritz Breithaupt examines the German novella as a form that represents reactions rather than actions. The last three essays, respectively, propose Hannah Arendt as a key theoretical resource for Romantic notions of deprivation, discuss the Romantic fascination with plant life, and exploit post-Freudian psychoanalysis to interpret the Romantic tropes of ‘silence’. The many insights laid out in this flawless collection will contribute to a better understanding of ‘form’ in Romanticism as well as to the reappraisal of its links with Modern thought. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532.
TI - Romanticism and Modernity. Ed. by Thomas Pfau and Robert Mitchell
JF - Forum for Modern Language Studies
DO - 10.1093/fmls/cqx066
DA - 2017-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/romanticism-and-modernity-ed-by-thomas-pfau-and-robert-mitchell-CSY4cZk5iT
SP - 511
VL - 53
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -