The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement

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Excerpt from The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement: A Study in Eighteenth Century LiteratureTaking these three elements, Subjectivity, Picturesqueness, and Reaction, it is easy to see why the Romantic movement in England, in Germany, and in France, went for its inspiration back to the Middle Ages. Romanticism is certainly wider in connotation than Mediaevalism, and in the discussion of Eng lish Romanticism attempted in this book, the definitions of Heine and Madame de Staél would have to be supplemented and amplified to be adequate. But in the Middle Age lay just the material for which the Romantic Spirit yearned. Its religious, military and social life and all forms of mediaeval art can hardly be better characterized than by the word Picturesque, and souls weary of form and finish, of dead perfection, of faultily faultless monotony, naturally sought the opposite of all this in the literature and thought of the Middle Ages. And as the Classical Augustans had neglected this period above all others, and treated it with contempt, the Reactionists began with an attempt to revivify and brighten this forgotten Mediaeval life.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.