Intertwined with romanticism and his communist political stance, Neruda expresses in multiple lines an ecocritical stance. Animals, landscapes, and the critique of the ideology of progress are found throughout his poetry. This chapter seeks to highlight his contribution within a broad conception of “environmental history.”

This chapter begins with an interpretation of the final sections of the ‘Spirit’ chapter of the Phenomenology. Here, Hegel diagnoses the paradoxes of Kantian theodicy before going on to elaborate, in a highly allegorical idiom, how he envisages overcoming the dichotomy between divine and human standpoints that plagued his Leibnizian and Kantian predecessors. By developing the thesis that evil is a structural possibility of rational self-conscious, the culminating dialectic of ‘conscience’ posits an essential relation between human freedom and the historicity of the good; the ideal of conscience, of a unity between natural and ethical wills, is their continually coming apart. The chapter then moves away from the Phenomenology to elaborate the resulting picture of Hegelian theodicy in its own terms, drawing also on Hegel’s preface to his Philosophy of Right. Hegelian theodicy stands revealed as reconciling us to reality by fulfilling a primarily diagnostic function, resolving our theodical puzzlement by explaining its mistaken, but intelligible, origins. To bring out the specificity of this view of Hegel’s project, the chapter ends by contrasting it with two recent alternatives, Michael Rosen’s ‘right Hegelian’ and Robert Brandom’s ‘left Hegelian’ interpretations.

In the decades of Romanticism a new view on culture emerged: one in which culture was nationally specific (each nation having its own characteristic cultural traditions) and should be seen as process of historical development (rather than the condition of being civilized and refined). In the emergence of this new, historicist and nationally specific idea of culture, an initial impetus was provided by the ‘discovery’ in the 1760s of the epic poems of the ancient Scottish bard Ossian. The figure of Ossian amplified the aesthetics of the ‘sublime’ and a view of the poet as a prophetic, even mantic figure, drawing on a transcendent-spiritual intuition and hence being able to speak with an inspired wisdom that went beyond mere rational cognition. This became enshrined in the poetics of the nascent Romantic movement and fed into the Hegelian notion of poet–prophets as world-historical figures articulating the consciousness of their national communities.

Nineteenth-century history paintings were as formative as the historical novel for fixing our cultural image of the national past. Their style was conformist and even kitschy; but their visual evocation of bygone ages provided Romantic narratives of the national past with a visual, spectacular and, what is more, enduring iconography. Painting operated in tandem with the historical novel and with history writing. It helped translate historians’ knowledge production into cultural production, into a cultural repertoire and a visual iconography. And as the study of history evolved from Romantic nationalism towards a more factualist, archive-driven academic specialism, that Romantic iconography continued to dominate the popular imagination of what the national past had been like. History painting shaped, lastingly, how the nation’s past was envisaged, even as its status declined to that of a largely decorative art.

This chapter begins in medias res; it traces and exemplifies Romantic historicism and its enduring potency in the political imagination of the two World Wars. Two specific legacies of Romanticism are identified: the idea that the nation is a transcendent principle deserving our devotion and loyalty; and the paradox that the nation, while inspiring our fervent political allegiance, it is itself not political or contentious but, rather, ‘unpolitical’. This twofold legacy explains the title of this book, Charismatic Nations. That concept is also discussed with reference to the emergence, in the century between Edmund Burke and Max Weber, of the notion of ‘charismatic leadership’; it is suggested that such leaders, as typified by Weber, often derive their charisma from the fact that they are seen to intuit and address the historical needs of the nation as a unified whole.

Industrial imperialism affected Europe before anywhere else, bringing a dizzying burst of modernization that altered habits of life and the ways in which wealth was created and distributed. Among the many results of this disruption would be the opening of new niches in what had become an ossified theatrical environment. At the same time, realism and romanticism offered new ways of viewing the world and shaped how theatre artists filled those niches. Ballet and opera were transformed by romanticism although both would also eventually be touched by realism. The literary romanticism of spoken theatre was overwhelmed by competition from melodrama (which effectively integrated romanticism and realism) and the “well-made play” (which eschewed literary ambition in favor of stage-worthiness). It was then outflanked by a stringent realism that emphasized psychological and social issues, whose theatrical plainness led to avant-garde efforts to “retheatricalize” theatre.

Romantic historicism expressed itself in the narrative representations of the national past, both in fiction (the historical novel) and in nonfiction (Romantic history writing). The rise and decline of the Romantic historical novel is discussed, with its characteristic combination of the past’s exotic allure and its moral relatability, and with special reference to the Scottish tales and the Europe-wide influence of Sir Walter Scott. The techniques of the historical novel in the style of Scott also inspired historians such as Jules Michelet, who began to see history as the collective experiences of national communities and adopted literary techniques of empathy and evocation. From the mid-century the historical novel began its long decline, addressing an increasingly downmarket readership, while historical fields went through a factualist and source-critical turn, away from the Romantic narrativity of the earlier practitioners. However, the Romantic imagination of the past as brought to life by the Scott/Michelet generation remained lastingly dominant outside the historical profession and in the various popular media of cultural memory.

This chapter uncovers the emergence and early history of the terms folk song and folk music in English during the nineteenth century as they circulated across the Atlantic and around the globe. One person in particular was responsible for this discourse: the prolific author and translator Mary Howitt. I show that these terms initially emerged in direct reference to the German Volkslieder, though they were not associated explicitly with the work of Johann Gottfried Herder nor with any particular nation or region. I use this material to argue that folk music was neither a repertoire nor an idiom, but rather an idea conditioned by Romantic thought. Indeed, it was the concept of folk music that most enchanted writers during this period – writers who were never of the folk they depicted. These terms are a nostalgic reply or retort to the interlaced revolutions and encounters that have defined modernity. Ultimately, this history exemplifies a long intellectual struggle in the West over the meaning and musical significance of working-class culture, nature, time, and colonial alterity.

This chapter discusses the renewed interest in the Arthurian matter in Europe in the nineteenth century with a focus on Germany, Spain, France and Italy. Tracing its reception from the Romantic period through to the emergence of modernism, we explore how the content,  values and aesthetic of Arthurian literature infused the cultural landscape. The form of reception ranges from the use of actual Arthurian material and chronotypes to the secondary influence exerted by the contemporary reception of Arthurian legend through Scott, Tennyson and later Wagner. The pattern of reception echoes that of earlier periods in its transnational character and, as the century progresses, it possible to see waves of interest with a ripple effect spreading out across Europe from Britain and the German-speaking lands as the material is incrementally absorbed into the contemporary cultural matrix of the Continent.

Alongside the rise of Romanticism, which emerged as a reaction to the perceived excesses of modernism and industrialization that threatened humanity’s integrity, came the rise of Romantic Orientalism as an academic field, institutionalized in universities and scholarly associations in the nineteenth century. Romantic Orientalists sought to rediscover in the East the lost innocence of human minds, or the pure knowledge of God, obscured by industrial civilization. Romantic Sinologists revived many of the Jesuits’ idealized views of China, immersing themselves in Confucian texts and Chinese folk religious practices to seek the untainted, original human soul and God-inspired morality. Notable Sinologists such as James Legge and J. J. M. de Groot exemplified this tradition in the study of classic texts and ethnography, respectively. They argued that Chinese civilization had remained continuous and unchanged for thousands of years, and its divinely inspired morality was equal to or superior to that of Europe.

The Mendelssohns were active at a time of contestation and change within music aesthetics and broader aesthetic theory. As well as outlining how they positioned themselves in relation to some of the key issues and debates of their time, the chapter examines their continuing investment in Enlightenment and classical aesthetic ideals and how this interacted with their engagement with Romanticism. It also explores the extent to which moral and aesthetic criteria are entwined in their judgements of contemporary music, fuelling their hostility towards French grand opera, the programmatic orchestral works of Berlioz, and French virtuoso pianism. Their own compositions frequently function as music-aesthetic interventions, aiming to counterbalance trends in musical life that they viewed negatively. Crucial is a discussion of the conceptions of truth and emotion at the heart of Felix’s aesthetics, explored through a comparison of his views with those of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher.

This chapter examines the early colonial imaginary of Australia. It demonstrates how there was no unified perception of the land but rather movement between utopic and dystopic visions, often according to audience. The chapter discusses poetic speculation on the expansion of empire into what was viewed as the ‘New World’ and the publicising of the colony as a space of pastoral idyll for prospective emigrants. It also considers the negative depictions of Australia as a penal colony, particularly through broadside ballads that were popular among the working class. Lastly, the chapter analyses the representation of female convicts and the adaptation of the eclogue form by Robert Southey.

While much has been written about race, colonization, and anticolonialism in fin-de-siècle Irish gothic works such as Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), this chapter focuses particular attention on Romantic-era Irish gothic fiction’s engagements with empire and the imperialized world. Written in the context of an increasingly expansive, globalized literary marketplace, the works assessed here – including Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800), Catherine Cuthbertson’s Romance of the Pyrenees (1803), the anonymous Amasina; or the American Foundling (1804), and Henrietta Rouvière Mosse’s Arrivals from India (1812) – provide an instructive example of Irish writers’ deft manipulation of systems of global economy to debate and contest questions of empire, relative civilization/barbarity, and ethnographies of race. They also point to the formal evolution of Irish gothic encouraged and enabled by writers’ responses to the economic and material realities of empire. Keenly aware of their global readership and their novels’ status as commodities, these writers invoke and reshape the gothic to think about the nature of authorship itself. Their works thus invite a reconsideration of the accepted makeup and characteristics of Romantic gothic, at the same time as they insist on an expansion of traditional canons of gothic and Irish gothic literature.

The Nonet for Winds and Strings follows a four-movement “sonata cycle” design that had become standard in the Classical chamber music tradition by the 1840s: A sonata-form first movement in a fast tempo is followed by a slow movement and an upbeat Scherzo, then a sonata-form finale. Farrenc’s sonata forms demonstrate the influence of her teacher Anton Reicha, whose treatises provide a guide to the informed study of her works. Farrenc’s innovations include continuous development in these movements and colorful harmonic narratives that deviate from later “textbook” explanations of form. Her use of contrapuntal writing, learned variation techniques, and references to familiar pieces from the wind chamber repertoire (Septets by Beethoven and Hummel) demonstrate her compositional mastery. Throughout the Nonet, she writes expertly for the instruments and incorporates playful dialogue and brilliant-style writing for all nine players in every movement. The Nonet became her most popular work, in part, because it balances virtuosity with craftsmanship, and the fun interactions between friends within the ensemble create an atmosphere of learned play for listeners and performers alike.

Chapter 8 observes the emergence of frontier tycoons toward the close of the nineteenth century, carried by a wave of “South Sea Romanticism” in literature and politics, propagated publicly by a pathos of drift and discovery. Fueled by insurgent demands of popular rights in the 1870s, grassroots expansionists claimed a “national right” to adventure and opportunity in the ocean frontier. Petty entrepreneurs of questionable reputation and ambivalent attitudes towards the law “opened” remote isles where state control faded. Others, like the entrepreneur Koga Tatsushirō who appropriated the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands in 1895, enjoyed governmental backing. Such island colonies were eventually absorbed by the empire’s corporate infrastructure and were refashioned as sandboxes for colonial administration. “Rogue entrepreneurs” meanwhile traveled as far as the Caroline Islands in Micronesia, where one businessman, operating below the government’s radar, eventually facilitated the installation of a Japanese South Seas Protectorate. The chapter argues that the Japanese empire’s modalities of expansion carried the imprint of these experiences.