This paper examines how three twentieth-century scholars approached the challenge of defining Romanticism. Drawing on Paul Kaufman's 1925 survey of competing definitions, Morse Peckham's 1951 theoretical framework, and David Perkins's 1990 historical account of the Romantic movement's origins, the paper traces shifting scholarly attitudes across more than six decades. Kaufman expresses frustration at the proliferation of contradictory definitions; Peckham offers a more pragmatic framework rooted in intellectual and cultural change; and Perkins grounds the movement in its literary-historical context, focusing on English poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. Together, the three articles illustrate how the scholarly conversation around Romanticism evolved from confusion to greater analytical clarity.
The paper demonstrates comparative source analysis: rather than summarizing each article in isolation, the author explicitly weighs the scholars against one another, identifying how each builds on or departs from prior definitions. This technique — tracing an intellectual genealogy across sources — is central to literature reviews and historiographical essays at the undergraduate level.
The paper opens with an introduction framing the challenge of defining Romanticism and announcing its three sources. It then proceeds source by source in chronological order — Kaufman (1925), Peckham (1951), Perkins (1990) — devoting a section to each. Each section summarizes key arguments, quotes the scholar directly, and offers evaluative commentary. A brief comparative observation closes the Peckham section. The paper concludes without a formal conclusion section, ending instead within the Perkins discussion, which is a minor structural weakness.
There are many ways to approach the concept — or movement — known as Romanticism, and over the years it has been perceived and defined in wildly different ways. Scholars and historians have spent tens of thousands of words dissecting, describing, and trying to come to terms with what Romanticism really means. This paper looks into scholarly approaches to Romanticism as represented in three different moments of the twentieth century: 1925, 1951, and 1990. How is the approach to Romanticism in 1925 different — but also similar — to an approach offered in 1990? That question and others germane to this topic will be addressed here. The three scholarly articles under examination are: Paul Kaufman's "Defining Romanticism" (1925); Morse Peckham's "Toward a Theory of Romanticism" (1951); and David Perkins's "The Construction of 'The Romantic Movement' as a Literary Classification" (1990).
History reminds us that 1925 was the year in which Adolf Hitler published his manifesto, Mein Kampf — the antithesis of Romanticism — and F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, not representative of Romanticism either. It was also the year Paul Kaufman published an article suggesting that there had been, since 1890, an "engrossing concern" as to the true meaning of Romanticism. Kaufman termed the number of attempts to categorize Romanticism as "bewildering" (Kaufman 193). He surveys interpretations by various scholars, adding to the sense of mystery surrounding what Romanticism truly represents.
When Kaufman uses the word "bewildering," he is apparently responding to the fact that, notwithstanding the many "formulas" in circulation regarding what Romanticism means, "widely divergent views" continued to multiply, adding to the confusion (194). He quotes Professor P. R. Frye (from a book published in 1922), who asserts that Romanticism is "anything which 'tends to disrupt or disturb the balance of the faculties'" (194). That is likely the most obscure attempt at defining Romanticism available, though Kaufman deserves credit for unearthing it. Another quotation Kaufman offers comes from Professor H. J. C. Grierson, who, in 1923, explained that in Romanticism "the spirit counts for more than the form" (Kaufman 194). Grierson did not exactly hit the nail on the head, but he is on the right track, since Romanticism is generally understood to be less about content and more about how and why a work was created.
It is clear that in the early 1920s scholars such as Kaufman were frustrated and nearly fed up with the task of arriving at a workable definition of Romanticism. On page 196 of his essay, Kaufman uses words such as "futility," "crisis," "hopeless," "intolerable," and "chaos" to describe previous attempts at a more precise description. Nevertheless, he seeks to reinvent a definition by searching for the historical meaning of the word "romantic" (198). He does not fully accomplish what he set out to do, however, since in his final paragraph he admits that the "present laissez-faire attitude" toward defining Romanticism is "demoralizing to criticism" (204). Moreover, he concludes, in an age of "wayward and troubled thought," any attempt to arrive at a workable understanding is "the greatest service criticism can render" (204).
Twenty-six years after Kaufman's essay, Morse Peckham engaged the same troubling issue with somewhat more success than his scholarly predecessor. Peckham, seemingly less bewildered, is certainly more pragmatic than Kaufman: he begins by establishing what Romanticism is not. Peckham asserts that Romanticism should not be viewed as having been spawned by the "political revolutions" in Europe or by the Industrial Revolution (Peckham 1951). While the great push for political reform in Europe does come into play within Romanticism, Peckham agrees, the two are not "the same thing" (5).
Peckham references Jacques Barzun's 1949 attempt to define Romanticism as part of "the great revolution which drew the intellect of Europe… from the expectation and desire of fixity into desire and expectation of change" (Peckham 7). As is typical among published scholars researching difficult or ambiguous topics, Peckham draws on prior scholarship to add credibility to his argument. He references an influential 1949 essay by René Wellek, which offers three components explaining Romanticism: (a) there was an intellectual and artistic movement in Europe with "certain intellectual and artistic characteristics" called "romanticism"; (b) those involved in the movement were "quite conscious of their historic and revolutionary significance"; and (c) the reason "skepticism" about Romanticism exists in the United States is attributable to Arthur O. Lovejoy's article "On the Discrimination of Romanticisms" (Peckham 7).
According to Peckham, Lovejoy's 1924 piece points to "a fearful variety of ways" in which Romanticism is defined, and Lovejoy insisted that no single concept could embrace all the ways in which Romanticism should be understood (7). That said, Peckham distills Lovejoy's "literary romanticism" definition — updated in Lovejoy's 1936 book — to the simple idea that there had been, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, "a change in the way of thinking of European man" (8). That change was long overdue, Peckham explained, because since Plato's original philosophy on the nature of reality, European minds had been locked in one mode of thought (9).
"Occidental art" and "occidental thinking" — "occident" referring to Europe and America, the West — came along as key elements of the Romantic movement and changed many fundamental ideas, including the belief that the cosmos was not a "static mechanism" but rather "a dynamic organism" (Peckham 9).
Comparing Peckham's 1951 treatise on Romanticism with Kaufman's 1925 essay is like comparing a hybrid automobile (Peckham) with a gas-guzzling thirty-year-old car (Kaufman). Both essays are well structured and accessible, but while Kaufman struggled with the definition and complained about the proliferation of wrongheaded attempts to define Romanticism, Peckham offers clues and answers that are genuinely helpful to the student researcher.
Still, Perkins's narrative is very different from those of the other two scholars examined in this paper, and he is honest when he recalls that toward the end of the nineteenth century Romantic poets were either "essentially liberal, radical, or revolutionary" (140). For much of society — especially those seeking a breath of fresh air in a world in transition and beset by power struggles — the Romantic poets provided an alternative: a saner and more peaceful path toward the future.
Kaufman, Paul. "Defining Romanticism: A Survey and a Program." Modern Language Notes, 40.4 (1925): 193–204.
Peckham, Morse. "Toward a Theory of Romanticism." PMLA, 66.2 (1951): 5–23.
Perkins, David. "The Construction of 'The Romantic Movement' as a Literary Classification." Nineteenth-Century Literature, 45.2 (1990): 129–143.
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