The Mind of the European Romantics: An Essay in Cultural History (Oxford Paperbacks)

'Ideas can be, and are, cosmopolitan,' Chateubriand observed; and certainly the scope of the nighteenth-century Romantic Movement was the widest imaginable: it not only affected all parts of Europe but even, to a lesser extent, the Americas. This book provides a comprehensive study of this Movement - in literature, painting, music, philosophy, religion, and other fields - and a detailed interpretation of all its main issues: intellectual, emotional, social and historical.
The initial revolt against the ideas of the eighteenth century is first seen in the larger context of history, and particular Romantic ideas and sentiments are then illustrated and anatomized in pen portraits of individual Romantics. In this way the successive phases of the beliefs of such key figures as Schelling, Coleridge and Lammenais - indispensable to any acount of the Movement - are carefully documented.