Memory in German Romanticism: Imagination, Image, Reception

Memory is a crucial component in the creation and interpretation of German Romantic art and literature. This volume investigates German Romantic memory through the categories of imagination, image, and reception, exploring how it is expressed artistically and how it shapes the artistic experience.

Format: Hardback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 31 March 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

In the realm of German Romanticism, memory assumes a central role in the creation and interpretation of art and literature during the Romantic era. The contributors to this volume delve into the diverse artistic expressions of memory, encompassing the realms of imagination, image, and reception. Romantic literary aesthetics elevates the subjective imagination to a paramount significance in the process of artistic creation. It transcends the boundaries of reason and objectivity, two dominant intellectual faculties of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and instead champions the power of subjective invention to shape and sustain memory and imagination. Indeed, memory and imagination, both cognitive processes, strive to assemble the fragments of one's own experience into a coherent narrative, whether oriented towards the past (memory) or towards the future (imagination). Similar to memories, images possess the ability to evoke intense emotional responses that endure over time and become integral to the spatial and temporal reception of the artist and their work. While imagination generates and images trigger and capture memories, reception establishes a temporal-spatial context for art, organizing it and rendering it memorable, both positively and negatively. Thus, through the categories of imagination, image, and reception, this volume explores the multifaceted phenomenon of German Romantic memory from various perspectives and in novel contexts.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032319841