In the past two to three decades, the criticism of European—in particular German—Romanticism has undergone vast revision. Among the revisionist literature that appeared during this time, Paul de Man’s essay “The Rhetoric of Temporality,” first published in 1969, may very well have had the greatest impact in reshaping common perceptions of Romanticism. De Man claims in the essay to have developed “a historical scheme that differs entirely from the customary picture,” according to which Romanticism fits neatly into the overall emergence of a “modern” notion of art.¹ He maintains, in fact, that conventional criticism domesticates the radical insights...

In approaching early German Romanticism as both a philosophical movement and a model for an aesthetic practice, it is tempting to look to the “Earliest Program for a System of German Idealism” as a conceptual and chronological starting point. The concerns outlined in this short text, which opens this volume—and whose authorship remains unclear to this day, but which has been attributed alternately to Hegel, Hölderlin, and Schelling—are echoed in many of the other texts that follow. The primary interest of this early text, which was written in 1796, lies in its unique presentation of the central concerns...

In Early German Romanticism, reflection on art and its philosophical role in society reached a peak. Around 1800, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel, and Novalis (as well as the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling) fundamentally rearticulated the relationship between philosophical and aesthetic investigation. In their writings, the fine arts and, in a more general sense, the aesthetic attitude as such are held up as the fulfillment of philosophical reflection.

Until the eighteenth century, art had primarily been a means for the dissemination and reproduction of the values and tastes of the ruling culture. To guarantee the perpetuation of this...

As the student who struggles with the heterogeneous writings of Jena Romanticism often has cause to regret, the group promulgated no manifesto. Denied the reassurance of a single text whose concept could delineate, unify, and thus complete a Romantic field, the reader is left to grapple with what appears to be an aggregate of disparate writings. Even identifying the genre to which any particular text belongs can prove to be a contentious issue, as the discussion surrounding the “Fragment of the Three Tendencies” indicates (see note 13). The lack of critical and historical agreement about the tenets defining Early Romanticism...

In Early German Romanticism, the body of work becomes the female body as the feminine is merged with philosophy. Novalis’s inscription of his bride Sophy and philosophy under the same name in the epigraph can be seen as a cipher for the introduction of the feminine into the Romantic project as a whole. The naming defines philosophy as feminine and establishes the centrality of the feminine to Romantic critique. Under this equation, both woman and the discourse of philosophy become the object of study. A blurring occurs between the boundaries of Sophy and philosophy. It becomes unclear whether Sophy should...