This work is subtitled ‘The History of a Genre’. It should be emphasized right from the start that it is not the intention of this author to develop an exclusive method of genre research. The problematic concept of genre excludes narrow schematization by its very nature: genres cannot be reduced to exact and absolutely valid definitions, since they are to a large extent subject to historical change. In the case of the specific genre that is to be studied here, moreover, the tendency in the romantic period for boundaries between genres to dissolve and even for the whole idea of genre to be regarded with hostility makes it practically impossible to apply a more precise method.

In the poetry of the romantic epoch, the genres might be compared with a network of subterranean water courses, and the researcher who is trying to follow the hidden lines of development with a water diviner who is obliged to obtain as many incomplete results as possible using all the methods at his disposal: observing the places where the underground streams come to the surface, i.e. where the poets are conscious of genre theory; divining for the development of taste; boring down into ‘archetypal’ ideas about genre; searching for the source, measuring and not least putting in additional colouring of his own to bring out the hidden changes of direction and mixtures.