Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Böhl von Faber and the establishment of a traditionalist Romanticism
- 2 The consolidation of Romantic ideas: 1820–1833
- 3 The exiles, liberal Romanticism and developments in criticism
- 4 Condemnation and clarification in the literary debate
- 5 Reaffirmation of Schlegelian principles in literary criticism
- 6 The religious spirit in literary ideas and the influence of Chateaubriand
- 7 The perception of literature's rôle in society
- 8 Romantic traditionalism in the work of Fernán Caballero
- 9 Conclusions: The mid-century
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - The perception of literature's rôle in society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Böhl von Faber and the establishment of a traditionalist Romanticism
- 2 The consolidation of Romantic ideas: 1820–1833
- 3 The exiles, liberal Romanticism and developments in criticism
- 4 Condemnation and clarification in the literary debate
- 5 Reaffirmation of Schlegelian principles in literary criticism
- 6 The religious spirit in literary ideas and the influence of Chateaubriand
- 7 The perception of literature's rôle in society
- 8 Romantic traditionalism in the work of Fernán Caballero
- 9 Conclusions: The mid-century
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Herder had stressed that the essence of history lay in the cultural evolution of nations and peoples, emphasising the developmental character of historical change and the organic manner in which it occurred. In the early nineteenth century, after Madame de Staël's pioneering study De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800) and the lectures of the Schlegel brothers, the emphasis in literary criticism shifted more and more away from the judgement of excellence according to immutable criteria, and towards an understanding of the particular factors – social, historical and religious – which underlay and influenced creative writing in different countries and in different periods. A major Romantic idea was that artistic taste was neither universal nor eternal, but had varied in ways intimately related to contemporaneous changes in social order. For the Romantic artist, a literary work was necessarily influenced and conditioned by the ‘spirit of the age’.
Böhl von Faber, writing in the wake of the Napoleonic invasion, had viewed a return to the Christian and monarchical spirit inherent in Spain's characteristic literary forms as a means of combating the rationalist doctrines of the Enlightenment, which he regarded as a threat to social stability. In his emphasis upon ‘piedad cristiana’ and ‘sana doctrina’, Böhl was in effect subscribing to the traditional idea of literature as moral guide. Ramón López Soler, writing in 1823–4, shared Böhl's view of literature as the manifestation of intellectual progress.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Spanish Romantic Literary Theory and Criticism , pp. 130 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991