ABSTRACT
CRITICS—particularly in Germany—have been irked by the term ‘romantic’. Its very elasticity has proved a disadvantage, for the word is so ambiguous, capable of such contradictory interpretations, that it defies precise definition. Not only do there seem to be at least as many sorts of romanticism as there are romantic authors, but even in the works of an individual author distinct phases of romantic usage may appear. Yet, though the word has its faults, it also has its uses, if only because it calls to mind immediately, by a traditional association of ideas, two principal concepts. The first is that of a specific chronological division of European literature ; in Germany it falls between the last decade of the eighteenth century and, roughly, the year 1830 (in France, the rise and fall of romanticism occurred later). The second basic implication of the word is that within this period a revival of what was called the ‘old-romantic’ art of the Middle Ages coloured a great many literary practices ; with more or less distortion medievalism was widely imitated and reinterpreted. This was not the first time that medievalism had been in fashion, but what was new in this admiration of the past was the fact that it expressed a retreat from the present, a deliberate turning-away from everyday reality in favour of an idyllic dream, as if the romantic artist were dissatisfied with the present and unable, or unwilling, to come to terms with it. His dissatisfaction was probably basically the result of a sense of morbid awareness of his own inadequacy and consequent inner disharmony, but he shifted the blame for this on to the contemporary state of human affairs, and staged his characteristic retreat into an ideal state of affairs of his own imagining, which he associated with the world of medieval Christendom. It did not disturb him that this medieval dream-world had no basis in fact, or comparatively little : it was enough for him that he wished that it had existed ; the wish is more important than an accomplished fact to such a man or—more exactly—to a man in such a mood, and anything that appeals to his imagination and feelings has an inherent authenticity independent of any intellectual documentation.
