Nemoianu V. The Taming of Romanticism: European Literature and the Age of Biedermeier

Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 1985. — ISBN10: 0674868021; ISBN13: 978-0674868021 — (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 37)Looking at a broad spectrum of writers--English, French, German, Italian, Russian and other East Europeans--Virgil Nemoianu offers here a coherent characterization of the period 1815-1848. This he calls the era of the domestication of romanticism. The explosive, visionary core of romanticism is seen to give way--after the defeat of Napoleon--to an expanded and softer version reflecting middle-class values. This later form of romanticism is characterized by moralizing efforts to reform society, a sentimental yearning for the tranquility of home and hearth, and persistent faith in the individual, alongside a new skepticism, shattered ideals, and consequent irony. Expanding the application of the term Biedermeier, which has been useful in describing this period in German literature, Nemoianu provides a new framework for understanding these years in a wider European context.The Dynamics of the Romantic Period
Support for an English Biedermeier
French Romanticism: Two Beginnings?
Eastern European Romanticism: Patterns of Substitution
Romantic Irony and Biedermeier Tragicomedy
The Biedermeier Historical Novel and the Decline of Compromise