ABSTRACT
In 'Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric', Abrams gives an excellent sketch of the paradigm. Like most paradigms of Western lyric, theirs calls attention to the mind of the speaker, but in the case of the Jewish Romanticists that mind finds itself in what can be called 'the drama of the lyric subject'. Although Romanticism may indicate an abundance of feeling, fantasy, and imagination, it does not facilitate a productive life in society or nature, and remains in that sense 'empty'. The calling of criticism as an act that invokes the collective, spiritual, and historical, that affects style as well as content, brings the Jewish Romantic critics into mutual relation. Romanticism especially the Romantic lyric and the essays written on their behalf becomes, even when taking account of different life experiences, a space of fulfillment for the critic-as-exile.
