The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism

by Nicholas Saul (Editor)

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw an extraordinary flowering of arts and culture in Germany which produced many of the world's finest writers, artists, philosophers and composers. This volume, first published in 2004, offers students and specialists an authoritative introduction to that dazzling cultural phenomenon, now known collectively as German Romanticism. Individual chapters not only introduce the reader to individual writers such as Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Eichendorff, Heine, Hoffmann, Kleist, Schiller and Tieck, but also treat key concepts of Romantic music, painting, philosophy, gender and cultural anthropology, science and criticism in concise and lucid language. All German quotations are translated to make this volume fully accessible to a wide audience interested in how Romanticism evolved across Europe. Brief biographies and bibliographies are supplemented by a list of primary and secondary further reading in both English and German.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, German Literature, Romanticism

362 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Nikos Gouliaros · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a companion, rather than an introduction, this book doesn't exhaust the basic aspects of German Romanticism. Instead, each essay, written by a different academic, offers an up-to-date, erudite approach to each aspect, from a specific point of view. Even though some elementary questions from a lay reader like me were left unanswered, these essays offered me interesting, and sometimes brilliant insight to this dazzling cultural phenomenon. 'Love, death and Liebestod in German Romanticism' was my favourite one.