NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature

by M. H. Abrams ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 29, 1971

Romanticism began with Rousseau and ended with American Transcendentalism, it came crashing through the salons of neo-classicism with the cry of revolutionary idealism and sank into respectability with the Boston Brahmins. Professor Abrams fixes the dates at 1789 to 1835; others, more liberally, suggest 1756 to 1848. No matter: the subject is wide, complex, and variegated, the most important cultural movement of recent history, and Professor Abrams has risen to the challenge with his colors flying. It is a remarkable work, the best since Mario Praz's The Romantic Agony, though humane and optimistic where Praz's classic was dark and Freudian-oriented: ""Both read the Bible day and night/ But thou readst black where I read white."" The essential point is that Romanticism was an ""endeavor to salvage traditional experience and values by accommodating them to premises tenable to a later age."" Thus Abrams concentrates on the transformation of traditional religious concepts, especially Christian mysticism, into a new poetics celebrating Love and Nature, as well as showing how Biblical eschatology influenced Hegelian philosophy and the social and political crises which followed in its wake. ""In effect these poets cry out for a transformation of history from the shape of eternal recurrence to the shape of apocalyptic prophecy, in which history reaches its highest point and then stops."" This has contemporary overtones and Abrams is not averse to drawing pungent parallels between the past and the present day. He is much too generous with Wordworth, who was not ""one of the great masters of complex poetic structure,"" but his enthusiasm is attractive, his erudition sublime. A superior study.

Pub Date: March 29, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION