Medievalism in the Romantic: Some Early Contributors

Abstract

"What was the romantic school in Germany? Nothing more nor less than the rebirth of the literature of the middle ages...." At least this was the critical attitude of the German poet Heinrich Heine from his Parisian exile in 1833, and where is there another definition so succinct which captures as accurately the essence of romanticism? In his little book Die romantische Schule from which the above quotation was taken, Heine always refers to romanticism in the past tense-as a thing that had appeared for a moment and was now gone and nearly forgotten. And he generally speaks of it with ridicule, or at best with the cool detachment of a Parisian reporter. How ironic that despite his disparaging remarks Heine himself is now considered by many discerning critics as a romantic poet. A similar attitude and a similar fate has befallen even Goethe, the arch classicist. Although at one time he summed up his opinion of romanticism with the terse statement, "classicism is health, romanticism is sickness," he is more increasingly being referred to as a romantic himself-especially by English and American critics. The sickness to which Goethe referred and which Heine lamented was primarily the romantic longing for the rebirth of the Middle Ages. It is difficult now to understand the disdaining remarks of Goethe and Heine, and such disdain was not limited to German critics. It is hard to understand, because this fascination with the medieval produced some of the most important romantic literature, including work by such artists as Sir Walter Scott and Alfred Lord Tennyson, Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, Novalis and Ludwig Tieck, Jose de Espronceda, Jose Zorrilla, and Gustavo Adolfa Becquer. It produced the ballad revival (which is still continuing today), the Gothic romance, the renewed interest in the Volksmirchen and folk literature, including the ubiquitous tales of the Brothers Grimm. It produced the revival of the northern mythology culminating in the operas of Richard Wagner. It contributed strongly to the pre-Raphaelite movement in art and the Dante revival. And outside the immediate domain of literature, the fascination with the medieval produced the Gothic revival in architecture and the increased interest in the science of philology. If there were no limitations of time and space a survey such as this would follow the medieval revival through the work of such late romanticists as John Ruskin and William Morris, and on into the present, and include such modem medievalists as J.R.R. Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, and C. S. Lewis. But here we are more concerned with beginnings than with continuations. Where did it begin?