The Concept of "Romanticism" in Literary History. I. The Term "Romantic" and Its Derivatives

Negative Romanticism: An Exploration of a Sense of Isolation in Yushij's <i>Afsaneh</i>

“…In order to achieve this aim, Peckham proposed Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being as a major breakthrough. In his view it is a book on which some of the most useful scholarship of our times has been based [4]. Peckham has marked the crucial turning point of the book in which Lovejoy has referred to a change in the European art after the French revolution, a change which has exercised drastic influence on European art: To be brief, in 1936 he stated simply that literary romanticism was the manifestation of a change in the way of thinking of European man, that since Plato European man had been thinking according to one system of thought based on the attempted reconciliation of two profoundly different ideas about the nature of reality, both stemming from Plato-and that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries occidental thought took an entirely different direction, as did occidental art.…”

“…Peckham has marked the crucial turning point of the book in which Lovejoy has referred to a change in the European art after the French revolution, a change which has exercised drastic influence on European art: To be brief, in 1936 he stated simply that literary romanticism was the manifestation of a change in the way of thinking of European man, that since Plato European man had been thinking according to one system of thought based on the attempted reconciliation of two profoundly different ideas about the nature of reality, both stemming from Plato-and that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries occidental thought took an entirely different direction, as did occidental art. [4] Peckham has also agreed on such a change in the European thought therefore he tries to trace the origin of this change. Therefore, in his article "On Romanticism: Introduction", he has tried to expand on this notion.…”

“…In this article, Peckham tries to bring forward Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being as a monumental work for understanding the change in the thought of the mind. Then, he mentions the distinction between two dynamic and static mechanisms by saying that the shift in European thought was a shift from conceiving the cosmos as a static mechanism to conceiving it as a dynamic organicism [4,5].…”

“…In this case, Peckham coins the term positive romanticism and negative romanticism to prove his point. For positive romanticism, he defines it as a term useful in describing men and ideas and works of art in which dynamic organicism appears, whether it be incomplete or fully developed [4]. Then Peckham suggests that in the case of poets like Byron we cannot understand it in terms of the appearance of dynamic organicism therefore to it must be added the term negative romanticism, [4].…”

“…For positive romanticism, he defines it as a term useful in describing men and ideas and works of art in which dynamic organicism appears, whether it be incomplete or fully developed [4]. Then Peckham suggests that in the case of poets like Byron we cannot understand it in terms of the appearance of dynamic organicism therefore to it must be added the term negative romanticism, [4]. He introduces this new term of 'negative romanticism' to solve the problem of understanding Byron and defines it in this way: Negative romanticism is a necessary complement to positive romanticism, not a parallel or alternative to it, with which it must be reconciled.…”