Rousseau and Romanticism

The words classic and romantic, we are often told, cannot be defined at all, and even if they could be defined, some would add, we should not be much profited. But this inabilit...

Romanticism, it has been remarked, is all that is not Voltaire. The clash between Rousseau and Voltaire is indeed not merely the clash between two men, it is the clash between t...

I have already spoken of the contrast established by the theorists of original genius in the eighteenth century between the different types of imagination--especially between th...

The period that began in the late eighteenth century and in the midst of which we are still living has witnessed an almost unparalleled triumph, as I have just said, of the sens...

The fundamental thing in Rousseauistic morality is not, as we have seen, the assertion that man is naturally good, but the denial of the “civil war in the cave.” Though this den...

What first strikes one in Rousseau’s attitude towards love is the separation, even wider here perhaps than elsewhere, between the ideal and the real. He dilates in the “Confessi...

The first romanticist who worked out a theory of irony was Friedrich Schlegel.[170] The attempt to put this theory into practice, after the fashion of Tieck’s plays, seemed and...

One of the most disquieting features of the modern movement is the vagueness and ambiguity of its use of the word nature and the innumerable sophistries that have resulted. One...

Rousseau and his early followers--especially perhaps his early French followers--were very much preoccupied with the problem of happiness. Now in a sense all men--even those who...

It has been my endeavor throughout this book to show that classic and romantic art, though both at their best highly imaginative, differ in the quality of the imagination. I poi...

[15] I scarcely need remind the reader that the extant Aristotelian writings which have repelled so many by their form were almost certainly not meant for publication. For the p...