Romantik: Journal for the Study of Romanticisms

Whose Tordenskjold? The Fluctuating Identities of an Eighteenth-Century Naval Hero in Nineteenth-Century Cultural Nationalisms

Tim van Gerven — 2019-01-01

The naval hero Peter Wessel Tordenskjold (1690–1720) was one of the most celebrated historical figures in both nineteenth-century Norway and Denmark. This double national cultivation gave cause for an ongoing feud between Danish and Norwegian historians concerning his true fatherland. At the same time, the uncertainty surrounding his exact nationality offered a wealth of material for narratives of Dano-Norwegian, and even pan-Scandinavian rapprochement. This article explores Tordenskjold’s track record as a figure of national cultivation by treating him as a dynamic and transnational memory site (lieu de mémoire). It will be demonstrated that the contestation surrounding the ownership of his memory formed an important motivation for the rich artistic cultivation of this national hero, while the symbolic meaning attributed to him was subjected to the ideological needs of the individuals and groups appropriating him. As such, Tordenskjold came to be alternately ingrained in Danish, Norwegian, Dano-Norwegian, and Scandinavian frameworks according to the relevant political and social circumstances.

Gathering Storm. A Landscape Painting from a Danish Province and its Art Histories

Susanne Bangert — 2019-01-01

This article presents a case-study of the, largely forgotten, Danish painter, F. C. Kiærskou (1805–1891). Kiærskou’s regular inclusion in exhibitions by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the Arts Society of Copenhagen indicates the success he enjoyed during his lifetime. Furthermore, a popular pictorial atlas of Denmark, published by Em. Bærentzen in 1856, featured several reproductions of Kiærskou’s paintings, many of which were then in prominent collections in Denmark. Nevertheless, Kiærskou found himself on the wrong side of a cultural rift that pitted the national against the international in art. Kiærskou’s success began to wane in his later years, and since his death he has been written almost completely out of Danish art history. This article explains Kiærskou’s journey into oblivion through an analysis of his method, subject-matter, correspondence, and reception.

Henry Crabb Robinson, Ernst Moritz Arndt, and William Wordsworth’s Convention of Cintra

Philipp Hunnekuhl — 2019-01-01

The various meritsof Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867) havebegun to emerge more fully in recent years. After studying at the University of Jena (1802–1805) and becoming a pioneering philosophical and literary disseminator between Britain and Germany, Robinson had two spells as a war correspondent for The Times – in Danish Altona in 1807 and Corunna in 1808–1809. This article discusses, for the first time, his long-neglected review of William Wordsworth’s Convention of Cintra (both published in 1809) against the backdrop of Robinson’sprofound understandingof German philosophy and first-hand experience of the NapoleonicWars. I argue that the ethical and cosmopolitan elements that Robinson found in the work of Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860), whom he had met in Stockholm in 1807, match the critical principles underpinning Robinson’s activity as a cross-cultural literary disseminator, and that he applied these principles in his review of Wordsworth’s pamphlet. These principles gain significance in the light of the present ‘ethical turn’ in romantic studies.

‘Something strangely perverse’. Nature and Gender in J. E. Millais’s Ophelia

Peter Brix Søndergaard — 2019-01-01

This paper analyses J. E. Millais’s Pre-Raphaelite painting Ophelia. Drawing on ideas formulated by Hermann Broch regarding the origins of romanticism and Adorno and Horkheimer’s theory of a dialectic of Enlightenment, the analysis focuses on the complex handling of gender and nature in the painting in order to show the shifting and contradictory constellations of meaning inherent in the subject. Central to the argument is the relationship between the characterization of Ophelia as a femme fragile and the nature that surrounds her, rendered with an almost hallucinatory clarity. Both nature and woman are shown to be capable of both conforming to and escaping from Millais’s painterly control. The painting turns out to be a vehicle for a young middle-class Victorian and his anxieties and yearnings.

On the Unconscious

Uffe Hansen — 2019-01-01

This article presents what has been called the long past and the brief history of the psychology of the unconscious. Laying out the main developments in 18th-century psychological research, paranormal experimentation, and philosophy of mind, it expands on the belief, held by a few controversial but brilliant minds, that empirical science could put the foundations under some of the main tropes of romantic literature – and that the mysteries of the soul could be unlocked through systematic research. A thorough section on the phenomenon of somnambulism discusses the belief that radically differently personalities exist side by side in the human psyche, which doubles as a portrait of an era when scientists and artists appeared united in the pursuit of comprehending the human condition – and to some degree learned from each other in the process. The article also contains an analysis of Heinrich von Kleist’s ‘The Engagement in St. Domingo’ and argues that it can be appreciated as a dramatization of some of the thinking and science discussed in earlier sections.

Foreword

Robert W. Rix — 2019-01-01

Romantikkens univers

Lis Møller — 2019-01-01

Studien zur Englischen Romantik

Charles I. Armstrong — 2019-01-01

Balloon Madness: Flights of Imagination in Britain, 1783–1786

Erik K. Steiner — 2019-01-01

About the Authors

Kasper Guldberg — 2019-01-01