Romantic Modernism and the Greek Polis

Abstract

The origins of Modernity lies in Romanticism. While the 17th century Baroque provides some proto-modern images of a world turned upside down, it is only with the appearance of Romanticism that the consciousness of upheaval, crisis and displacement - of breach - becomes a fully positive value, a sign of the birth of an entirely new and propitious world. Romanticism is the movement that gave originality - meaning, here, the creation of the new - its pride of place in the language of the 19th and 20th centuries. Why originality? For the Romantics, it was a question of purity, or in more contemporary terms, of authenticity. The Romantics revolted against the 18th century view of the artist as an imitator - an imitator of human types, of cultural forms, or of nature. This view was rejected because it meant that the artist was indebted to something other than his or her own self-generating creativity.