Blackwell Reference Online

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On September 3, 1967, at 2 a.m., Swedish government and transportation officials executed a nationwide edict to switch traffic from driving on the left side of the street to the right. With military precision (and, in fact, the assistance of the army), the Swedish government distributed a 30-page document to each individual household, stopped all traffic for five hours, rearranged signage, and allowed traffic to resume on the opposite side of the street from the previous day.Although there have been times in history where matters of culture or taste have seemed to reverse themselves suddenly, seldom do historical periods begin or end with such militaristic precision. The transition in Europe from Enlightenment Classicism to Romanticism has frequently been described in dichotomous terms – opposing, for example, Enlightenment or classical preference for rational order and symmetry with Romantic preference for spontaneity, fragmentation, and organicism. Indeed, the traits of Romantic and Enlightenment thought seem so dichotomous that it is hard to imagine the mechanisms of a transition between them. What suits the convenience of historians and their students, however, also tends to suit the historical self-understanding of individual epochs that define themselves in contrast to that which preceded them. Accordingly, in order to benefit from periodicization or even to identify the dominant ... log in or subscribe to read full text