This is the sixth volume to be published in the excellent Cambridge History of Literary Criticism series. It presents an analysis in 17 chapters of the literary criticism during the Romantic period. The geographical focus is largely European. Each chapter is accompanied by footnote documentation and written by acknowledged experts in their respective fields. In his concise introduction, the editor of the volume, Marshall Brown, indicates that as the volume should “be useful today and to an Anglophone readership, [he has] not tried to represent all facets of literary criticism from our period equally” (p. 4).
In the first chapter, Paul H. Fry writes on the subject of “Classical standards in the period”. His is a salutary reminder that “the contempt for rules presumed ‐ qua rules ‐ to be mechanical and arbitrarily superimposed is after all an undeniable hallmark of Romanticism” (p. 9). After examining revisionary Romantic readings of Longinus, he cautions against exaggerating “the Romantic reaction against Classical standards” (p. 13). Fry’s discussion encompasses German and French thought in addition to English romantic writers. Stendhal is considered as well as Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel. Similar eclecticism is found in the next essay by Alfredo de Paz, the eminent Italian art critic. His discussion entitled, “Innovation and modernity”, on “the inaugural and modern dimensions of literary and artistic criticism in Europe” (p. 29), is translated into a text easy to read by Albert Sbragia.
In the third chapter, David Simpson considers the impact on Romanticism of the French Revolution. Simpson’s discussion is wide‐ranging, embracing, among other writers, Wordsworth, Shelley, Taine, Schlegel, Hegel, Hazlitt, Byron, and Schiller. Simpson is the author of the fourth chapter focusing on “Transcendental philosophy and Romantic criticism”. Much of Simpson’s attention is devoted to an explanation of the overpowering influence of the ideas of Kant. Helmut J. Schneider opens his exploration of the subject of “nature” with the sentence:“Of all ideas commonly associated with Romanticism in the arts, the idea of nature is perhaps the most inclusive and the most evocative” (p. 92). “Scientific models” in criticism are the subject of Joel Black’s essay. E.S. Shaffer is concerned with “Religion and literature” and Kurt Mueller‐Vollmer writes on “Language theory and the art of understanding”. His essay is followed by David E. Wellbery’s “The transformation of rhetoric” which, in common with several other essays in the volume, stresses the importance of Kant’s Critique of Judgement, published in 1790, for an understanding of Romantic critical thought.
Gary Handweek writes: “More than any other element of Romantic aesthetics, Romantic irony contradicts the pervasive popular view of what Romanticism means”: the reason being that “irony is the other side of Romanticism, attuned to rationality rather than feeling” (p. 203). His consideration of “Romantic irony” encompasses work on the subject written during the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as Friedrich Schlegel, Karl Solger and other Romantic writers. In her “Theories of genre”, Tilottama Rajan, in one of the denser and lengthier contributions to the volume, distinguishes between a “formalist” and “phenomenological theory of genre” (p. 228). The editor, Marshall Brown, turns his attention to the Romantic “Theory of the novel”. This is followed by Jonathan Arac’s illuminating “The impact of Shakespeare” on Romantic criticism. Jon Klancher reflects on “The vocation of criticism and the crisis of the republic of letters”, and Theresa M. Kelley, on “Women, gender and literary criticism”, In the final two contributions to the volume, David Perkins writes on “Literary history and historicism” and Herbert Lindenberger, on “Literature and the other arts”. His essay encompasses art and music criticism.
The volume concludes with an extensive unannotated alphabetically arranged by subject bibliography, and page references to the textual references in the book. There is a detailed index. Inevitably there will be omissions in such a volume, the most glaring of these being to the great Romantic thinker, Sir Walter Scott. Further, Russian thinkers seem to receive a short shrift. The book is sturdily bound for lengthy reference shelf life, and nicely typeset with reasonable margins. The fifth volume of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Romanticism, is highly recommended for library purchase.
