Abstract
Abstract Is romanticism an essentially conservative and reactionary movement? Or does it also contain revolutionary potential by virtue of its opposition to capitalism and bourgeois society? The first difficulty in dealing with these questions is the ambiguity of the romantic phenomenon. Notwithstanding this, however, one of the most fundamental traits of romanticism as a sociopolitical movement (though inseparable from its cultural and literary manifestations) is the nostalgia for pre-capitalist societies and a cultural critique of capitalism. Etymologically, the term “romantic” contains this reference to the past: to the romance-language literature of the Middle Ages. If so, why extend the concept of romantic nostalgia to the entire gamut of pre-capitalist formations?
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