The Revolution in Romantic Genre Theory

For students of literary history one of the most fascinating chapters in the development of modern genres constitutes the rapid rise of the German novel from its status as the least appreciated genre in the pre- Romantic period to its commanding position as the most innovative and comprehensive manifestation of high literature in the age of Romanticism. One may in fact argue that the novel became the primary battleground for the Romantic revolution in literature that took shape after the publication of Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, 1795–96), a work whose significance Friedrich Schlegel compared to the French Revolution on the political stage (KFSA, 2: 198: Athenaeum no. 216). According to Schlegel, all novels are revolutionary in the sense that only a genius is able to write in this genre. This programmatic statement reveals Schlegel's belief in the challenging possibilities of novel writing if undertaken by a gifted author. However, until the publication of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, Schlegel had encountered only rare examples of ingenious novelists able to rise above the conventional chivalric, courtly, or pedestrian sentimental stories. Not surprisingly, Christian Friedrich von Blanckenburg (1744–96), in his groundbreaking study Versuch über den Roman (Essay on the Novel, 1774) starts out with the observation that novels heretofore had generally been written for the entertainment of the masses and idle women.