Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes

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classmates find themselves in the trenches under

constant attack by French machine guns and poi-

sonous clouds of mustard gas. Baumer’s romantic

and nationalistic perspective of war, which the

reader finds in the beginning of the novel, is re-

placed by sudden physicality, violence, and, ulti-

mately, a sense of the futility of war. Today, All

Quiet on the Western Front is considered one of the

best depictions of war and a masterpiece of Ger-

man literature. The work was internationally ac-

claimed and read worldwide. In Germany,

however, the novel was politically controversial:

Not only did it enrage members of the rising Nazi

party, it was also labeled as defeatist and unpatri-

otic by many veterans whose sensibilities were in-

jured by the frankness Remarque depicted.

In 1931, Remarque published The Way Back. A

chilling sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front,

the novel presents the collapse of the German gov-

ernment and army after the war and the return of

the veterans into a world that has been shattered

forever. In the 1930s, Remarque’s position in Ger-

many became precarious because of the rise of the

Nazi regime. All Quiet on the Western Front was

banned and was among the works that were pub-

licly burned by the Nazis in 1933. The premier of

the film adaptation was violently disrupted by Nazi

gangs. In 1938, after accusations of pacifism, the

Nazi government stripped Remarque of citizen-

ship. Remarque fled to the United States and set-

tled in Switzerland after World War II.

Remarque’s later works did not receive the same

critical acclaim as All Quiet on the Western Front but

achieved a wide popularity among readers. He con-

tinued to describe a European society plagued by

social and political upheavals. Remarque also ad-

dressed the oppression of the Nazi rule: Arch of Tri-

umph (1946) portrays a German physician who

flees from the Nazi rule. Remarque also closely col-

laborated with filmmakers in the United States, and

several of his novels were adopted into screenplays.

Today, Erich Maria Remarque’s work continues

to remind readers of the horrors of war. His works

are widely read and have been translated into more

than 20 languages. A remarkable and heroic writer,

Remarque was not afraid to express his views,

despite the constant threats and harassments by

the Nazi regime. Remarque died in Locarno,

Switzerland.

Other Works by Erich Maria Remarque

The Black Obelisk. Translated by David Lindley. New

York: Fawcett Books, 1998.

Three Comrades. Translated by A. W. Wheen. New

York: Fawcett Books, 1998.

A Work about Erich Maria Remarque

Barker, Christine. Erich Maria Remarque. New York:

Barnes and Noble, 1980.

Reyes, Neftali Ricardo

See NERUDA, PABLO.

Rhys, Jean (Ella Gwendolyn Rees

Williams)

(1890–1979) novelist, short-story

writer

Jean Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica, West In-

dies, to William Rees Williams, a Welsh doctor, and

Minna Williams (née Lockhart). She attended a

Dominican convent school until immigrating to

England at age 16, where she attended Cambridge’s

Perse School and London’s Academy of Dramatic

Art before joining a touring theater company.

Three-and-a-half black notebooks, filled after a ro-

mantic break in 1913, were the basis for the novel

Voyage in the Dark (1934).

During the 1920s, Rhys was loosely a part of the

“Left Bank” writers, including such writers as James

Joyce, Hemingway, and Ford Madox Ford, who rep-

resented the artistic and intellectual realm of politics.

Ford helped Rhys publish her first work, The Left

Bank and Other Stories (1927). Four more novels fol-

lowed in the 1930s. Themes of denial, dissonance,re-

jection, discrimination, and alienation run through

these and others of Rhys’s works, which employ a

controlled style, literal and figurative imagery, and

first- and third-person points of view. Inquiries

made by actress Selma Vaz Dias in 1949 to perform

368 Reyes, Neftali Ricardo

a dramatic adaptation of the modernist Good Morn-

ing, Midnight (1939) and in 1956 to broadcast the

same novel as a radio play encouraged Rhys to com-

plete her fifth novel, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), the

story of which is derived from Charlotte Brontë’s

Jane Eyre and tells the haunting tale of Rochester’s

first wife. In The Letters of Jean Rhys (1984), Rhys

called the novel “a demon of a book” that “never

leaves” her; the critics called the book a masterpiece.

During the years, British, American, and

Caribbean critics have attempted to position Rhys’s

works as distinctively British, American, or

Caribbean, respectively. In Fifty Caribbean Writers

(1986), Jean D’Costa summarizes Rhys’s impor-

tance to world literature when she says that “Rhys’s

works offer much to the analysts of society, of sexu-

ality, of the psyche, of British imperial history, of

Anglo-European letters, and of the Creole societies.”

Other Works by Jean Rhys

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie. New York: Harper &

Row, 1982.

The Collected Short Stories. Introduction by Diana

Athill. New York: Norton, 1987.

Smile, Please: An Unfinished Autobiography. Berkeley,

Calif.: Donald S. Ellis/Creative Arts, 1983.

Works about Jean Rhys

Lykiard, Alexis. Jean Rhys Revisited. Exeter and

Devon: Stride Publications, 2000.

Mellown, Elgin W. Jean Rhys: A Descriptive and Anno-

tated Bibliography of Works and Criticism. New

York: Garland Press, 1984.

Savory, Elaine. Jean Rhys. New York: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 1999.

Richardson, Elaine Potter

See KINCAID, JAMAICA.

Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875–1926) poet,

playwright, translator

Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague, Czecho-

slovakia, to Josef Rilke, a minor railroad official,

and Sophie Entz, a descendant of an aristocratic

family. His mother dressed him in girls’ clothes

and called him Sophie until the age of eight to

compensate for the loss of her infant daughter. So-

phie Entz was a devout Catholic and often went

on pilgrimages to shrines and other holy places;

young Rilke accompanied her. This early experi-

ence with Catholicism left Rilke with a profound

distrust and dislike of Christianity.

Rilke’s parents separated when he was nine,

and he was sent to a military academy by his fa-

ther. Because of ill health, Rilke left the academy

and traveled to Leinz, Austria, to study business.

He was apprenticed to his uncle’s law firm as a

clerk. Rilke decided against a career in business

and attended universities in Prague, Berlin, and

Munich, where he studied art history, philosophy,

and literature. He developed a talent for languages

and became fluent in Russian, French, English,

Danish, and Czech. Rilke developed a close rela-

tionship with several Russian intellectuals and ac-

companied them on a trip to Russia in 1899,

where he met Leo

TOLSTOY and studied Russian

spiritual mysticism.

Critical Analysis

Today, Rilke is considered one of the greatest lyri-

cal poets of the German-speaking world. He began

his career as a poet in 1894 when he published a

small, conventional volume of poems, Leben und

Leider. While working as a correspondence secre-

tary for Auguste Rodin in Paris, Rilke composed

The Book of the Hours: The Book of Monastic Life.

Saint Francis of Assisi is a major figure in the work.

Rilke transforms this conventional image of Chris-

tian humility and piety into a kind of pagan nature

spirit who permeates all things. Furthermore, Rilke

praises traditional Christian values, such as

poverty and spiritual purity, and often presents

God as a humble, homeless man: “For blessed are

those who never went away / And stood still in the

rain without a roof.”

Among Rilke’s prose works, The Tale of the Love

and Death of Coronet Christoph Rilke (1906), a long

prose poem, became a great popular success. Set

Rilke, Rainer Maria 369

during the 1660s, the dynamic prose of the work

tells of a young coronet who joins the European

forces in their fight against the Ottoman Empire.

The young coronet falls in love with a young lady,

but he is killed during a sudden attack by the Turks

the next day. Rilke, however, does not utterly glo-

rify the military. The poem includes brutal scenes

of violence and conveys the monotony of long mil-

itary marches.

Rilke was a master of several genres. His fa-

mous novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

(1910) takes the form of the diary of a Danish

poet who arrives in Paris and describes his reac-

tions to the cultural and intellectual life in the city.

The novel uses flashbacks to describe the events of

Laurids’s childhood and the various European

cities that he had visited. Lacking a traditional

plot, the novel focuses on episodes in Laurids’s life

that create confrontation in his development as a

writer. Eventually, Malte Laurids realizes that he

has to transform himself metaphorically into an

open vessel, receiving the outside events without

preconceptions, to become a truly great poet.

Rilke’s last seminal collections of poetry, Duino

Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, were both pub-

lished in 1923. Both works no longer dealt with or-

dinary images; instead, they concentrated on the

larger themes of life and death, spirituality, philos-

ophy, and materiality. Rilke presented material and

spiritual worlds as entities and the individual as

an observer entrapped between the both realms,

only momentarily able to capture them. The alien-

ated artist, however, can build a bridge between

two worlds by creating a material translation of the

spiritual realm. Indeed, the theme of alienation is

one of the most dominant ones in the collection:

“We are not at one / Are not in agreement like

birds of passage / Overtaken and delayed, we force

ourselves suddenly on the winds / and fall onto an

indifferent pond.”

Rainer Maria Rilke established himself as one of

the most important figures of German literature.

Although he is mainly remembered as a poet, he

made a tremendous impact in virtually every

genre. Rilke’s influence on his generation of poets

is simply enormous: he composed a significant

corpus of poetic works in Russian and French, and

he translated innumerable literary works from

English, French, Russian, and Danish into Ger-

man. Today, Rainer Maria Rilke is considered as

the most important 20th-century poet of the Ger-

man-speaking world: “Rilke was a large man, ex-

pansive in his concern for the fate of human beings

in a difficult world,” as Patricia Brodsky notes.

Rilke’s death was as strange as his life; he died from

an infection that was contracted from a prick of a

rose’s thorn.

Other Works by Rainer Maria Rilke

Ahead of All Parting: Selected Poetry and Prose of

Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Stephen

Mitchell. New York: Modern Library, 1995.

The Book of Images. Translated by Edward Snow.

Portland, Oreg.: North Point Press, 1994.

Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. Translated

by Joanna Macy. New York: Riverhead Books,

1997.

Works about Rainer Maria Rilke

Brodsky, Patricia. Rainer Maria Rilke. Boston:

Twayne, 1988.

Freedman, Ralph. Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke.

Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1998.

Rimbaud, Arthur (1854–1891) poet

Arthur Rimbaud was born on October 20 in

Charleville, a town in provincial France. He was

the son of an army captain who deserted his fam-

ily when Rimbaud was only six years old, forcing

the family into poverty. This abandonment be-

came a central theme in Rimbaud’s poetry and was

represented by the figure of a mythical father who

was a man of action and an adventurer. Rimbaud’s

mother was afraid that her son would become

hardened by his experience, especially when he be-

came intrigued by the social conditions in which

he was forced to live and began to sneak out to play

with his peers. She eventually secured the means to

move her family to the best part of town but still

370 Rimbaud, Arthur

forbade Rimbaud to associate with boys his own

age. She appears in his works as a controlling and

domineering figure.

Deprived of the company of his peers, Rimbaud

devoted himself to his studies until July 1870

when, with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian

War and the departure of his favorite teacher who

left to serve with the army, he became despondent

and fled his home to begin a life of rebellion.

Rimbaud spent a year of his life as a vagabond,

denouncing women and the church, living on the

streets in the most squalid conditions he could

find. He studied the so-called immoral poets, such

as BAUDELAIRE, and read everything from philoso-

phy to the occult. He also began writing poetry,

some of which he sent to Paul VERLAINE who, in

1871, invited the aspiring poet to visit him at his

home in Paris.

Although the rest of the Parisian literary world

rejected him, Rimbaud and Verlaine became

lovers. In 1872, Verlaine left his wife and moved

with Rimbaud to London. Their relationship was

a difficult one, but it continued off and on for

more than two years, giving Rimbaud a sense of

spiritual and emotional disillusionment. After a

drunken argument between the couple in Brus-

sels, Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist. Rimbaud,

who had grown tired of the relationship, notified

the police. Verlaine spent 18 months in prison.

Rimbaud’s guilt and disillusionment prompted

him to write A Season in Hell (1873; translated

1932).

Rimbaud’s affair with Verlaine eventually

ended, and Rimbaud abandoned writing com-

pletely when he was not yet 20 years old. Returning

to his earlier rebellious nature, he became a trader

and gunrunner in Africa. He died 18 years later,

on November 10, in Marseille, France, following

the amputation of his right leg.

Rimbaud’s literary legacy, however, lives on.

He is known as the precocious boy-poet of

SYM-

BOLISM and is credited with being one of the cre-

ators of free verse because of the rhythmic

experimentation in his poem Illuminations (1886;

translated 1932). Rimbaud’s poetry is remarkable

in its subtle suggestiveness. His work draws

largely on subconscious sources, delving deeply

into the human psyche. He helped to popularize

synesthesia, a device commonly employed by

symbolist poets in which one sensory experience

is described in relation to another. In his “Sonnet

of the Vowels” (1871; translated 1966), for exam-

ple, each vowel is assigned a particular color and

other sensory associations.

In addition, Rimbaud’s influence can be seen

in diverse works of modern literature, particularly

that of the Beat poets. He has also been cited as

the source of inspiration for modern musicians,

such as Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and Patti Smith.

Another Work by Arthur Rimbaud

Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters. Translated

by Wallace Fowlie. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1987.

Works about Arthur Rimbaud

Cohn, Robert Greer. The Poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.

Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,

1999.

Robb, Graham. Arthur Rimbaud. New York: Norton,

2000.

Rinser, Luise (1911–2002) novelist,

short-story writer

Luise Rinser was born in Pitzling, Bavaria. Her par-

ents Josef and Luise Sailer Rinser were strict

Catholics. After she finished grammar school in

1930, Rinser studied psychology and pedagogy at

the University of Munich. She earned her teaching

diploma in 1934 and spent four years teaching ele-

mentary school. After her first husband, conductor

Horst-Günther Schnell, died fighting in World War

II, Rinser married composer Carl Orff in 1954.

Rinser began to write in the 1930s and pub-

lished her first story, “Die Lilie” (“The Lily”) in

1938. Her first published volume Die gläsernen

Runge (Rings of Glass, 1941) gained popular ap-

proval but was banned by the Nazis for promoting

values different from those approved by the

Rinser, Luise 371

government. In 1944, Rinser was sent to a concen-

tration camp for opposing the war effort. She

described her prison experiences in Gefängnis-

Ta g e b u c h (Prison Diary, 1946). After World War II,

Rinser wrote short stories and worked as a literary

critic and columnist. Her novel Mitte des Lebens

(Nina, 1956) became a major international success

and was translated into 22 languages. In the 1970s

and 1980s, she published six diary volumes and a

best-selling autobiography. A political activist, she

ran for president of West Germany in 1984 as the

Green Party candidate.

Rinser’s influences include the baroque

Catholic tradition, Eastern philosophy, Carl Gus-

tav Jung, and Ernest Hemingway. A major theme

in her works is the plight of the disadvantaged and

oppressed. Her specific topics include the fight for

female equality in a patriarchal society and power

politics in the Catholic Church. Critic Albert

Scholz writes in “Luise Rinser’s Gefängnistage-

buch” that Rinser “is strongest and most effective

in her positive attitude toward the fundamental

questions of the present day, in her striving for

truth, and in her portrayal of authentic human be-

ings working and suffering.”

Another Work by Luise Rinser

Abelard’s Love. Translated by Jean M. Snook. Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

A Work about Luise Rinser

Falkenstein, Henning. Luise Rinser. Berlin: Collo-

quium Verlag, 1988.

Robbe-Grillet, Alain (1922– ) novelist

Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest, France, to a

family of scientists and engineers. Before becom-

ing a writer, he worked in a German tank factory

during World War II and earned a degree from the

National Institute for Agronomy. He worked as an

agronomist, supervising several banana planta-

tions in the West Indies, until 1955, when he took

a job at Les Editions de Minuit, a well-known pub-

lishing house, as a literary consultant.

Robbe-Grillet had actually begun to write

much earlier in his life, completing his first novel,

A Regicide, in 1949, although it was not published

until 1978. An illness in 1951 prompted his writing

of The Erasers (1951), the work that established

him as a novelist and gained him recognition and

a leading position in the

NEW NOVEL group. Robbe-

Grillet followed this work with The Voyeur (1955)

and In the Labyrinth (1959).

In response to the growing debate as to what

constitutes the new novel, he wrote For a New

Novel (1963). According to Robbe-Grillet, the per-

spective of the new novel is highly subjective and

expresses the angle of vision of individual charac-

ters, not of the novelist or reader. He also con-

demned the use of metaphors, for which he

received much criticism from his contemporaries

Jean Paul SARTRE and Albert CAMUS who felt that his

ideas were out of touch with reality.

Critical Analysis

Robbe-Grillet’s works often lack the traditional or

conventional elements of literature: a solid dra-

matic plot, character development, and coherent

chronology. Instead, his works are often composed

of recurring images and events from daily life.

Although Robbe-Grillet has worked in several

literary genres, he is first and foremost a writer of

mysteries, albeit nontraditional ones. His novel,

The Erasers, which earned him the Feneon Prize

for Literature in 1954, mixed a traditional mystery

story with shifting perspectives and vividly de-

tailed descriptions of common, natural objects,

such as a tomato slice. In his most famous work to

date, Jealousy (1957), which is considered to ex-

emplify the new novel, the main character spies

on his possibly adulterous wife. The plot is sec-

ondary, if not nonexistent, and Robbe-Grillet de-

votes the bulk of the work to studying the

importance of the narrator to the creation of the

text.

In addition, many of Robbe-Grillet’s so-called

mysteries, including The Voyeur, leave the reader

without any concrete resolution. In this case, the

novel (which was awarded the Critic’s Prize in

372 Robbe-Grillet, Alain

1955, in spite of the fact that many members of the

jury did not feel the work could be classified as a

novel) is about a traveling watch salesman named

Mathias who is never explicitly identified as the

murderer.

Using the same fractured structure that he

employed in his novels, Robbe-Grillet wrote

and directed several works for the screen, in-

cluding Trans-Europ-Express (1966), which in-

corporates ideas from Alfred Hitchcock films

and the popular gangster genre, and Topology of

a Phantom City (1976), which uses freeze-frame

cinematography to focus on specific elements.

The tale of a police investigation into the mur-

der of a French prostitute, this film is often told

from the first person perspective of David, the

narrator, who is also the perpetrator of the

crime.

Another of Robbe-Grillet’s trademark devices

was the use of bizarre descriptions of sexual vio-

lence. Many of these were based on images taken

from the visual arts. La Belle Captive (1975) was

inspired by the paintings of René Magritte, for ex-

ample. In Snapshots (1976), he includes a story in

honor of a work of painter Gustave Moreau, “The

Secret Room,” in which he vividly describes a

chained and abused woman.

In his later novels, Robbe-Grillet turned his at-

tention to the spy genre. Djinn (1981) recounts the

fractured tale of a man who works for an American

spy. In the process, he is forced to question his own

existence when he is told that he is not real at all

but merely the product of a dream.

In 1984, Robbe-Grillet published the first part

of an autobiographical trilogy, Ghosts in the Mir-

ror. In this work, he acknowledges Claude

SIMON’s

idea that everything is autobiographical to some

extent, indicating that much of his work is drawn,

at least in part, from elements of his own life and

memory.

Robbe-Grillet continues to write regularly. His

most recent work, following his same themes, is

La Reprise (2001), about a spy’s sado-erotic experi-

ences in postwar Berlin.

Another Work by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Project for a Revolution in New York: A Novel. Trans-

lated by Richard Howard. New York: Grove Press,

1972.

A Work about Alain Robbe-Grillet

Smith, Roch C. Understanding Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,

2000.

Roberts, Charles (1860–1943) poet, short-

story writer

Charles G. D. Roberts was born in Douglas, New

Brunswick; the eastern Canadian landscape would

have a profound impact on his work. He gradu-

ated from the University of New Brunswick and

published his first book of poetry, Orion and

Other Poems, in 1880. From 1879 to 1895, Roberts

worked as a teacher in New Brunswick, as editor

of the literary magazine The Week, and as a

professor at King’s College of Windsor, in Nova

Scotia.

Regarded by many as the father of Cana-

dian poetry, although he also wrote prose,

Roberts, along with three contemporary writers,

styled themselves the “Poets of the Confedera-

tion” and strove for a distinctly Canadian voice.

During this period, he wrote one of his most

celebrated collections, In Divers Tones (1887).

Although in this and other works Roberts at-

tempted to establish a Canadian national litera-

ture, he was profoundly influenced by British

Victorian poets. The title of In Divers Tones, for

example, is taken from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s

long poem In Memoriam.

In 1897, Roberts moved to New York. He

began, in part for financial reasons, to write

prose; in particular, he pioneered the genre of the

modern animal story. These stories are collected

in the volumes Earth’s Enigmas (1896) and Eyes

of the Wilderness (1933). Roberts returned to

Canada in 1925, settling in Toronto, and returned

to writing poetry as well. Roberts was knighted

in 1935.

Roberts, Charles 373

Another Work by Charles Roberts

Keith, W. J., ed. Selected Poetry and Critical Prose.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.

romanticism

The term romanticism is applied to literary, intel-

lectual, and artistic movements of the late 18th to

mid-19th centuries that share a number of com-

mon characteristics, including strong emotion,

imagination, freedom from classical correctness in

art forms, and rebellion against social conventions.

Many romantics advocated a return to nature and

a belief that humanity, specifically the individual,

was innately good or worthy, rather than inher-

ently sinful, as the church had held for centuries.

Romanticism was also, in part, a revolt against the

age of reason and the ideals of rationalism.

Psychologically, romanticism was marked by a

focus on emotions over intellect (the sense that the

artist is an individual and thus the supreme creator

of his or her own work) and on a deep feeling of

national pride. Whereas the thinkers and writers of

the Enlightenment paid homage to the classical

writers by emphasizing reason, logic, order, and re-

straint, the romantics valued emotional experi-

ence. Romantic works emphasize subjective

experience, individuality, and imagination. Ro-

mantics value emotional experience, individual

style, and spontaneity in the individual expression

of experience.

Imagination and emotions are linked to nature

rather than to reason and logic. The romantics be-

lieved that human nature was generally good but

was corrupted by society. Considering this philo-

sophical viewpoint, it is not surprising that many

romantics depicted and praised various aspects of

nature because the natural environment outside

the confines of civilization was supposedly a force

that encouraged the possibility of authenticity and

goodness. Nature, often seen as the antithesis of

materialism and the social conflicts produced by

civilization, became a prominent theme in the

works of romantics. The romantics also revered

childhood, which they saw as a natural state be-

fore the intervention of the corrupting forces of

modern society.

Romantic writers, opposing the established

order, also insisted on political and moral changes.

Many took inspiration from the French Revolution

of 1789, before the horrors of the Reign of Terror.

Critics have sometimes attributed the romantic

opposition to

REALISM to the political affiliations

of the movement. Many romantics became politi-

cally disenchanted after a series of failed European

revolutions of the early 19th century. However,

broadly speaking, the term romanticism applies to

the arts, philosophy, and politics.

Romanticism in Germany

Romanticism originated in Germany and England

during the 18th century as an opposition to the

Enlightenment and neoclassicism. Eighteenth-cen-

tury German philosopher Fredrich von SCHILLER

was the first to apply the term to the literary move-

ment.

In Germany, romanticism played an especially

significant role in the development of national lit-

erature. Johann Wolfgang von GOETHE and

Friedrich von Schiller are perhaps the most im-

portant figures associated with German romanti-

cism. In his poetry and prose, Goethe created

powerful emotional scenes often set against the

background of wild, untamed nature. Likewise,

Schiller created powerful emotional scenes, com-

bining elements of folklore and traditional genres

of literature. Many romantics also began to com-

pose works celebrating the vernacular German

and German culture. E. T. A.

HOFFMANN and the

GRIMM brothers wrote fairy tales that not only in-

cluded fantastic and irrational elements but also

celebrated the traditional culture of the German

people. The humble heroes of their tales exempli-

fied the courage, morality, and ingenuity of the

common people. Achim von Arnim (1781–1831)

and Clemens Brentano (1778–1842) collaborated

on a collection of German tales that were orally

transmitted to them by various common folk

throughout Germany. Romanticism began dur-

ing the process of unification of the German

374 romanticism

states, and thus greatly contributed to the estab-

lishment of a unified German national identity.

In certain ways, romantic literature in Germany

was linked with the romantic tradition in music:

Wilhelm Müller’s (1784–1827) Die Winterreise was

transformed into a series of musical pieces by

Franz Schubert (1797–1828). Ludwig Uhland

(1787–1862) wrote lyrical ballads that praised na-

ture and human passions based on the traditional

tales of German peasants.

German romanticism was perhaps one of the

most influential movements in the history of Eu-

ropean literature, affecting innumerable writers in

England, France, Russia, and later America. The

works of German romantics are still read and ap-

preciated throughout the world. Romantics were

visionary in their concern for emotions and psy-

chology and their humanistic emphasis on the in-

dividual, particularly the individual who occupies

a humble rank on the social ladder.

Romanticism in France

Romanticism arrived later in France than it did in

Germany and England. The reasons for this are

largely political. During the French Revolution and

the Napoleonic Wars, France was too involved in

its own internal struggles to be greatly affected by

the outside world. In 1815, however, with the

restoration of the monarchy, the return of the

French nobility from exile brought about signifi-

cant changes in literature and culture, as well as in

politics. Many of those nobles who returned had

lived for many years of exile in England. On arriv-

ing in France, they brought with them a variety of

English cultural traditions, including the poetry

of English romantic poet George Gordon, Lord

Byron (1788–1824). Up until this point, French lit-

erature had for the most part held to the 17th-cen-

tury literary ideal of neoclassicism. In a time when

large-scale sociopolitical changes were occurring

with great force, the works of Racine and Corneille

and the expression of perfect harmony and clarity

that had their roots in the Greek and Roman tradi-

tions were soon usurped by the rebellious beauty

of romanticism.

Romanticism did not arrive in France without

precedents, however. The works of the 18th-cen-

tury writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau anticipated the

trend by focusing on the social aspects of the

human condition and questioning whether the

concept of the soul could be dealt with rationally.

In Les Confessions (1770), for example, Rousseau’s

subject, himself, becomes the most important fig-

ure in literature, granting the “I” form of identity

a sense of supremacy that was lacking in literature

to that point.

François-René CHATEAUBRIAND expresses the

alienation of young aristocrats after the revolution,

and with his René and Atala explores the themes of

melancholy and exile. Germaine de STAËL’s De

L’Allemange introduced German mysticism and

romanticism into France and contested universal-

ist ideals in the name of a national literature. In

French theater, Victor HUGO is credited with having

set forth a definition of the movement in the Pré-

face to his play Cromwell (1827). Hugo champi-

oned freedom of speech and freedom of the artist

and individuality in all of his works, most notably

in the novels Les Misérables (1862) and Notre

Dame de Paris (1831).

In general, the romantic shared a few common

goals. The focus on political freedom and the ex-

ploration of individual psyche, even to the point of

the bizarre and the supernatural, became of ut-

most importance. The peculiar and the macabre

were stressed as equally valid aspects of humanity.

Gothic literature and the fantastic experienced a

rise in popularity in the 1830s. Poetry, in particu-

lar, turned to nature as a source of primary inspi-

ration. The romantic poet often felt the need to

suffer to understand art as it related to the human

condition. Political activism and the push for

social change were also important aspects of the

movement.