Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

If “the modern system of the arts,” to borrow the phrase Kristeller uses in his well-known essay, was in place by the middle of the eighteenth century and if it was structured according to the neoclassical hierarchy of the arts and genres, can we rightly say “the Romantic system of the arts” succeeded and replaced it? Even the neoclassical “system,” no doubt, was various and uneven, appearing the less systematic the closer one examines it, containing or failing to contain contrary or anomalous trends which indeed sometimes anticipate Romanticism itself. Nonetheless, a coherent pattern of artistic and literary theory and practice, an ideal system of norms, prevailed in Europe as part of the general cultural hegemony of France. It was contested, but it prevailed: it was backed by the patronage, academies, and tastes of the ancien régime , not only of the nobility but of the high bourgeoisie. Many of the Romantics' experiments or innovations in all the arts and in every country met with fierce attacks from this establishment, and not a few were compared to or blamed on the political upheavals that began in 1789. With due allowance for complications and counter-trends, then, I will assume the active presence of the modern neoclassical system as I try to describe, briefly enough to convey a sense of the whole of it, the “Romantic system” that was in large part a reaction against the ... log in or subscribe to read full text