ABSTRACT
European culture in the half-century after 1830 lay in the backwash of the Romantic movement. In poetry and music greater achievements had been made in the half-century before 1830, and in painting, sculpture and architecture much greater achievements were to be made in the half-century after 1880. In only one art form – the novel – was the nineteenth century supreme. Europeans of the mid-nineteenth century expressed themselves most happily in prose; they preferred, even in their poetry, the explicit statement to the poetic image; in their music, painting and sculpture they were often self-conscious and literary; their architecture usually showed an academic fascination for the styles of past ages. Only in the novel did the period prove to be – simultaneously in several parts of Europe – triumphantly creative.
