Criticism

Abstract

The Romantic era is one of the great ages of literary criticism; but if one were looking for some general consensus about the nature and procedures of literature, then ‘Romantic Literary Criticism’ would quickly prove an elusive entity, more so even than, say, ‘formalism’ or ‘New Historicism’ might. Coleridge's gigantic attempt to construct a theory of literature and criticism based on absolute philosophical principles stands at one extreme; but, no less ‘Romantic’ would be the self‐conscious contrary of such systematic ambitions – the occasional, essayistic genius exemplified by Hazlitt and Lamb, or the literary review essay, effectively invented in the period by Jeffrey and others. A few major concerns do often recur, however, many a common inheritance from the rich confusion of Enlightenment aesthetics, experienced in common by otherwise quite diverse writers who each explore them in their own way: for example, the ideas of naturalness (and its partnering contrary, artificiality), of organicism (and mechanism), and of poetic egotism (and empathy). Other pairings might be chosen just as well, I am sure; and any of these would deserve a long chapter. But this entry hopes at least to map some of the contours of the critical mind in the period, keeping in mind especially the way that these disputations shape what the critics say about Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope, the three authors about whom Romantic criticism gathers with most intensity and interest, and Wordsworth, the contemporary figure who provokes the most telling and illuminating critical response.