Authors: Frederick C. Beiser
ISBN-13: 9780674011809, ISBN-10: 0674011805
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Date Published: January 2004
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Frederick C. Beiser is Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University.
The Early Romantics met resistance from artists and academics alike in part because they defied the conventional wisdom that philosophy and the arts must be kept separate. Indeed, as the literary component of Romanticism has been studied and celebrated in recent years, its philosophical aspect has receded from view. This book, by one of the most respected scholars of the Romantic era, offers an explanation of Romanticism that not only restores but enhances understanding of the movement's origins, development, aims, and accomplishmentsand of its continuing relevance.
Poetry is in fact the general ideal of the Romantics, Frederick Beiser tells us, but only if poetry is understood not just narrowly as poems but more broadly as things made by humans. Seen in this way, poetry becomes a revolutionary ideal that demandedand still demandsthat we transform not only literature and criticism but all the arts and sciences, that we break down the barriers between art and life, so that the world itself becomes "romanticized." Romanticism, in the view Beiser opens to us, does not conform to the contemporary division of labor in our universities and colleges; it requires a multifaceted approach of just the sort outlined in this book.
The author writes clearly and lucidly, arguing forcefully and convincingly on the basis of sovereign knowledge of the material. [A] most excellent volume.
Preface | ||
Introduction: Romanticism Now and Then | 1 | |
1 | The Meaning of "Romantic Poetry" | 6 |
2 | Early German Romanticism: A Characteristic | 23 |
3 | Early Romanticism and the Aufklarung | 43 |
4 | Fruhromantik and the Platonic Tradition | 56 |
5 | The Sovereignty of Art | 73 |
6 | The Concept of Bildung in Early German Romanticism | 88 |
7 | Friedrich Schlegel: The Mysterious Romantic | 106 |
8 | The Paradox of Romantic Metaphysics | 131 |
9 | Kant and the Naturphilosophen | 153 |
10 | Religion and Politics in Fruhromantik | 171 |
Abbreviations | 189 | |
Notes | 191 | |
Bibliography | 225 | |
Index | 241 |