Routledge Library Editions Romanticism

This set reissues 28 books on Romanticism originally published between 1940 and 2006. Routledge Library Editions: Romanticism provides an outstanding collection of scholarship which explores not only Romantic literature but the Romantic Movement as a whole, including art, philosophy and science.

First published in 1981. This book aims to show Romanticism as a response to certain questions – in literature, art, religion, philosophy and politics – that were being asked increasingly towards the end of the eighteenth century. The essays focus on growth and change (in society and the individual), nature, feeling and reason, and subjectivism – examining how these questions arose, why they were felt to be important and the kinds of answers that, consciously or unconsciously, the Romantics provided. This title will be of interest to students of literature, history and philosophy.

First published in 1967. These essays illustrate the movement of ideas in the literary and artistic history of the later part of the nineteenth century. The subjects dealt with are diverse though interrelated. All the contributors exemplify the changing thought of the period from Romanticism, through Victorianism to Symbolism. This title will be of interest to students of art history and literature.

First published in 1981. This study concentrates on the exponents of the central period of German Romanticism, regarding as characteristic the mode in which the poet’s self becomes active only in response to external stimuli, most notably those of landscape. The author traces the main strands of thought and interests that preoccupy Romantic writers; the revolutionary attitude that is yet differentiated from that of writers like Byron by the lack of emphasis on individualism, the dualism of the bourgeois world and the ‘inner self’, the interest in language as an agency for the regeneration of the German spirit, and the concentration on folk-themes and the idea of Wanderung. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

Originally published in 1955, this book discusses Romantic principles and their interpretation in literary practice, supported by the documentation (with translations) of numerous quotations from the writings of the romantic authors themselves. The emphasis lies on the evolution of Romantic ideas and practices in Germany, in the establishment and formulation of romantic theory by its first exponents.

First published in 1980. This title provides a critical and historical account of poetry written between 1780 and 1835. The author has been especially concerned to place the great poems and poets of the age in the context of the conventions and traditions in which they wrote, offering new perspectives on familiar works. Poems still famous are examined often in relation to works of a similar kind fashionable at the time but now neglected, and these unconventional groupings throw fresh light on Romantic poetry as a whole. An appendix is included, designed to be read as a supplement to the main text, serving both as a chronology and as a brief guide to works that do not fall within the scope of the main argument. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

This set reissues 10 books on T. S. Eliot originally published between 1952 and 1991. The volumes examine many of Eliot’s most respected works, including his Four Quartets and The Waste Land. As well as exploring Eliot’s work, this collection also provides a comprehensive analysis of the man behind the poetry, particularly in Frederick Tomlin’s T. S. Eliot: A Friendship. This set will be of particular interest to students of literature.

First published in 1980. This collection of carefully selected extracts from primary texts seeks to show what the Romantics themselves held Romanticism to be. The movement is thus defined in terms of the writers’ own views of their art both in general principle and in practical terms. This title will be of interest to students of literature.