ROMANTICISM IN OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.
Germany
In Germany the Sturm und Drang
school, with its obsessive interest in medievalism, prepared the way for
romanticism. Friedrich Schlegel first used the term romantic to
designate a school of literature opposed to classicism, and he also applied
the philosophical ideas of Immanuel
Kant and J. G. Fichte to the “romantic
ideal.” Major German writers associated with romanticism include G. E.
Lessing, J. G. Herder, Friedrich
Hölderlin, Schiller, and particularly
Goethe, who had a mystic feeling for nature and for Germany's medieval
past.
France
and Other European Countries
The credo of French
romanticism was set forth by Victor Hugo in the preface to his drama Cromwell
(1828) and in his play Hernani (1830). Hugo proclaimed the freedom
of the artist in both choice and treatment of a subject. The French romantics
included Chateaubriand, Alexandre Dumas père, Alphonse de Lamartine,
Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset, and George
Sand. Other leading romantic
figures were Giacomo Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni in Italy, and Aleksandr
Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov in Russia.
ROMANTICISM
IN THE UNATED STATES.
The United
States
In the United States
romanticism had philosophic expression in transcendentalism, notably in
the works of Emerson and Thoreau. Poets such as Poe, Whittier, and Longfellow
all produced works in the romantic vein. Walt Whitman in particular expressed
pride in his individual self and the democratic spirit. The works of James
Fenimore Cooper reflected the romantic interest in the historical past,
whereas the symbolic novels of Hawthorne and Melville emphasized the movement's
concern with transcendent reality.
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