ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a transition to the consideration of literature. It intents to organise this discussion under the rubrics provided by the traditional distinction, still accepted by the romantics and by no means redundant even today, of three fundamental kinds of poetic writing namely lyric, dramatic and epic. One of the chief aims of romantic poetry, as Friedrich Schlegel says in the fragment just quoted, is 'to reunite all the separated genres of poetry'. The traditional genres were indeed taken, and employed, but invariably with a romanticising intent, which brought them closer together. The traditional genres were indeed taken, and employed, but invariably with a romanticising intent, which brought them closer together. There was, a strong tendency among the romantics to minimise the differences between the three principal kinds of literary expression. At the same time, the temptation to abolish the distinction is resisted.
