Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T04:20:46.127Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Forms and objectives of Romantic criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2010

Nicholas Saul
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Get access

Summary

In his Kritische Fragmente (1797; Critical Fragments) Friedrich Schlegel famously remarked that the literary critic is just a reader who chews the cud. Hence he needs more than one stomach. Schlegel also asserted that modern poetry is a running commentary on the short philosophical proposition: 'All the arts should become science, and all science should become like the arts.' Thus the arts and sciences are inherently related. These two aphorisms encapsulate our core argument. The sciences and the arts were not only intimately interrelated for Romanticism, but their seemingly heterogeneous methods of inquiry - and by extension the art of criticism and its public dissemination - were also inseparable. Thus not only the critic, but also the reader, is best served by having more than one stomach, the better to digest such diverse fare. These aphorisms of course foreshadow Schlegel's even more famous Athenaeum Fragment No. 116 on the nature of Universalpoesie, which he characterises as a state of eternal becoming that can never be exhausted by theory and the inner essence of which can be accessed only by 'eine divinatorische Kritik' ('a divinatory criticism', Firchow, p.175; KFSA II, pp.182-3). This perception in turn lies behind his later, self-reflective judgement in the essay 'Über die Unverständlichkeit' (1800; 'On Incomprehensibility') on the forms and possibility of genuine communication between author and critic, text and reader. There he claims that his is a 'Zeitalter der Tendenzen' ('Age of Tendencies'), that is, an era in which all ideas and projects are best understood as constitutionally incomplete, caught up in an on-going dialectic that allows only preliminary conclusions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×