Philosophical Critique and Literary Criticism in German Romanticism

Abstract

In the “Preface” to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant declared his time to be “the genuine age of criticism.” Little did he know how much criticism would flourish in the decades that followed. This chapter argues that the early German Romantics were at the center of this development, making important contributions to debates about the nature of philosophical critique and literary criticism during the 1790s and early 1800s. It is through these new conceptions of philosophical critique and literary criticism that the early German Romantics were able to bridge the divide between history, philology philosophy, and poetry in the early nineteenth century.