Romanticism in Literary France - Essay Example

Eventually the royalist establishment would also have reason to be disturbed by romanticism's revolutionary ideological component and would suddenly represent some of it most vehement assailants. The difficulty of this position especially for the royalists is described by the author as a, "still more awkward position, fighting against a doctrine without being able to attack even its living followers who were all good royalists and whose support the party did not want to lose" (Lanyi 150). The revelation that to attack the genre effectively and coherently required an ad hominem excoriation of its practitioners as opposed to a formal stylistic criticism is indicative of the politicized aesthetic that defines this critical mode of discourse.

 On stylistic grounds, the most cogent presentation that was provided in the article came from Francois-Benoit Hoffman, an orthodox critic, who intended to meet romanticism on its own literary terms in a review of Hugo's Nouvelles Odes (Lanyi 145). The main thrust of this argument is that romanticism seeks futilely to circumvent the real world, a world of naturalistic images and empirical references, and attempts to access the ideal world a world that is necessarily mediated by the natural.

This epistemological confusion results in highly idealized, obscurantist and difficult prose. The failure to recognize the basic mediatory of romanticism fundamentally broken. The classicists' awareness of this issue prompts them to acknowledge.. The liberal antagonism towards romanticism was engendered for two specific reasons. Initially, it was seen as a decadent and extravagant form of literature whose aristocratic appeal was disturbing, and many of the practitioners of this new form of literature were members of the royalist faction in France and consequently the products of such an association were necessarily tainted with royalist ideology.

Eventually the royalist establishment would also have reason to be disturbed by romanticism's revolutionary ideological component and would suddenly represent some of it most vehement assailants. The difficulty of this position especially for the royalists is described by the author as a, "still more awkward position, fighting against a doctrine without being able to attack even its living followers who were all good royalists and whose support the party did not want to lose" (Lanyi 150). The revelation that to attack the genre effectively and coherently required an ad hominem excoriation of its practitioners as opposed to a formal stylistic criticism is indicative of the politicized aesthetic that defines this critical mode of discourse.

On stylistic grounds, the most cogent presentation that was provided in the article came from Francois-Benoit Hoffman, an orthodox critic, who intended to meet romanticism on its own literary terms in a review of Hugo's Nouvelles Odes (Lanyi 145). The main thrust of this argument is that romanticism seeks futilely to circumvent the real world, a world of naturalistic images and empirical references, and attempts to access the ideal world a world that is necessarily mediated by the natural. This epistemological confusion results in highly idealized, obscurantist and difficult prose.

The failure to