Includes bibliographical references and index.

This study brings to completion the author's planned trilogy on European culture during the modern epoch. Demonstrating remarkable erudition and sweeping breadth, this book analyzes Romanticism as a unique cultural phenomenon and a spiritual revolution. The author philosophically reflects on its attempts to recapture the past and transform the present in a movement that is partly a return to premodern culture and partly a violent protest against it. Following an introduction on the historical origins of the Romantic Movement, the author examines the principal Romantic poets of England (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats), Germany (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Hölderlin), and France (Lamartine, de Vigny, Hugo), all of whom, from different perspectives, pursued an absolute ideal. In the chapters of the second part, the author concentrates on the critical principles of Romantic aesthetics, the Romantic image of the person as reflected in the novel, and Romantic ethical and political theories. In the chapters of the third, more speculative, part, he investigates the comprehensive syntheses of romantic thought in history, philosophy, and theology. This book will meet the expectations of the specialist as well as appeal to more general readers with philosophical, cultural, and religious interests.