Rousseau and Romanticism

Otto Scott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351492607
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literaturkritik des Mittelalters & der Frühen Neuzeit

This volume is the best-known and most widely discussed work of the influential scholar and critic Irving Babbitt (1865-1933), intellectual leader of the movement known as the New Humanism. It is also the work that best conveys the ethical and aesthetic core of his thought. Broad in scope, it examines a variety of manifestations of romanticism and presents a typology of the imaginative inclinations of that movement Rousseau is analyzed as paradigmatic of the ethical and aesthetic sensibility that is replacing the classical and Christian outlook in the Western world. For Babbitt, works of imagination are integral to human life in general. He explores romanticism with a view to its implications for Western civilization.Babbitt identifies serious ethical, religious, aesthetic, and philosophical problems in the modern world, but he also shows how remedies to those problems must incorporate the best insights of modernity. First published in 1919, the book is strikingly relevant to today's discussion of the crisis of American and Western culture and education. Babbitt anticipated and analyzed dangerous cultural trends whose consequences are now widely bemoaned. He applies to these phenomena an intellectual breadth and depth rare today. At the end of the twentieth century his prescriptions for dealing with the central problems of Western civilization have acquired an acute urgency. At a time of much renewed interest in Rousseau, Babbitt's book offers a penetrating commentary that challenges widely held beliefs and interpretations.Graced with a lengthy and wide-ranging new introduction by Claes G. Ryn, Rousseau and Romanticism is simultaneously a work of literary history, criticism, and a theory of civilization. In addressing its special subject, this classic study reflects the main themes of Babbitt's thought, making it representative of his work as a whole. Ryn explicates and critically assesses Babbitt's central ideas, refutes widely circulating

Bibliography

My only justification for these very unsystematic bibliographical notes is that; bringing together as they do under one cover material somewhat scattered and inaccessible to most readers, they may help to add to the number, now unfortunately very small, of those who have earned the right to have an opinion about romanticism as an international movement. A list of this kind is a fragment of a fragment. I have given, for example, only a fraction of the books on Rousseau and scarcely any of the books, thousands in numbers, which without being chiefly on Rousseau, contain important passages on him. I may cite almost at random as instances of this latter class, the comparison between Burke and Rousseau in the fifth volume of Lecky's History of the Eighteenth Century; the stanzas on Rousseau in the third canto of Childe Harold; the passage on Rousseau in Hazlitt's essay on the Past and Future (Table Talk).

The only period that I have covered with any attempt at fullness is that from about 1795 to 1840. Books that seem to me to possess literary distinction or to deal authoritatively with some aspect of the subject I have marked with a star. I make no claim, however, to have read all the books I have listed, and my rating will no doubt often be questioned in the case of those I have read.

I have not as a rule mentioned articles in periodicals. The files of the following special publications may often be consulted with profit. Those that have current bibliographies I have marked with a dagger.

† Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France. — † Annales romantiques. — † Revue germanique (Eng. and German).

† Englische Studien — Anglia. — † Mitteilungen über Englische Sprache und Literatur (Beiblatt zur Anglia). — † Arohiv für das Studium, der neueren Sprach-en (Herrigs Arohiv). — † Zeitsohrift für französische Sprache und Literatur — Kritischer Jahresbericht der romanischen Philologie — Germanisch-Romanisohe Monatschrift — Euphorien (German lit.) — † Zeitschrift für deutsches Alter-tum und deutsche Literatur.

Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. — † Modern Language Notes (Baltimore). — Modern Philology (Chicago).— The Journal of English and Germania Philology (Urbana, III.). — † Studies in Philology (Univ. of North Car.). — † The Modern Language Review (Cambridge, Eng.).

Works that are international in scope and that fall either wholly or, in part in the romantic period are as follows: L. P. Betz: *La Litterature Comparée, Essai bibliographique, 2^e éd. augmentée, 1904.—A. Sayous: Le XVIII^e siécle à l'étran-ger, 2 vols. 1861. — H. Hettner: *Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahr. 1872. 6 vols. 5th edn. 1909. (Still standard.) — G. Brandes: *Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, 6 vols. 1901 ff. Originally given as lectures in Danish at the University of Copenhagen and trans. into German, 1872 ff. (Often marred by political "tendency.") —T. Süpfle: Geschichte des deutschen Kultureinflusses auf Frankreich, 2 vols. 1886-90. —V. Rossel: Hist, de la litt. fr. hors de France. 2^e éd. 1897.—C. E. Vaughan: The Romantic Revoll, 1900. —T. S. Omond: The Romantio Triumph, 1900. (A somewhat colorless book.)

English Field

* The Cambridge History of English Literature, vols, X, XI, XII, 1913 ff. (Excellent bibliographies.) — See also articles and bibliographies in * Dictionary of Nation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• TRANSACTION INTRODUCTION
• ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
• I. THE TERMS CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC
• II. ROMANTIC GENIUS
• III. ROMANTIC IMAGINATION
• IV. ROMANTIC MORALITY: THE IDEAL
• V. ROMANTIC MORALITY: THE REAL
• VI. ROMANTIC LOVE
• VII. ROMANTIC IRONY
• VIII. ROMANTICISM AND NATURE
• IX. ROMANTIC MELANCHOLY
• X. THE PRESENT OUTLOOK
• APPENDIX-CHINESE PRIMITIVISM
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX