ABSTRACT
Romanticism means many different things to many different commentators (Holbrook 1995b, 1997d), but the conceptualisation that I personally prefer (Holbrook 1987b, 1991, 1995a; Holbrook and Hirschman 1993) comes from Wordsworth by way of Abrams (1971) and emphasises the importance of a dialectic involving departure and return, dissolution and reunion, loss and recovery, dissonance and resolution, …opposition and reconciliation. Specifically, in a fragment from ‘The Recluse’, Wordsworth spoke of our Fall from Paradise and looked towards the recovery of this lost Bliss in the World of Everyday Consumption or, as he called it, ‘this great consummation’:
Abrams (1971) takes these lines as his touchstone for romanticism, placing special emphasis on the theme of reconciliation and its links to the magic, mystical, or otherwise miraculous:
The vision is that of the awesome depths and height of the human mind, and of the power of that mind as in itself adequate, by consummating a holy marriage with the external universe, to create out of the world of all of us,
For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day.
