ABSTRACT
The first Romanic literature, however, was born in Germany, the fruit of the union between the old theosophy which emanated from Boehme and owed its modern strength to Swedenborg, and the new worship of nature and inspiration which derived from Rousseau. The principal link between the German Romantics and the French school that succeeded them was Mme de Stael, the daughter of Louis XVFs finance minister Necker. The most effective dramatist among the French Romantics was, in the long run, Musset, whose eighteenth-century poses, prior to his infatuation with George Sand, brought him close to the spirit of Marivaux. The chief German Romantics were story-tellers rather than poets. Ludwig Tieck wrote Romantic plays, which contained good scenes, but betrayed his sad lack of a dramatic sense, as well as contributing to scholarship and criticism, and completing the Shakespeare translation of a. w. von Schlegel, who with his brother Friedrich elaborated a philosophical justification of Romanticism.
