Gothic Views, Romantic Visions: The Spatial Dynamics of Modern Art and Literature

It is widely accepted that the revival of Gothic architecture in England during the eighteenth century, which gradually spread to France and Germany, was one of several touchstones for the transformation of taste which preceded the Romantic movement in literature and the visual arts. The purpose of this study is not only to examine the aesthetic concepts of the Gothic Revival--in architecture, literature, and landscape gardening--but to explore how these concepts were further nurtured by several Romantic authors, assimilated into their overall program for literature and art, and ultimately became the vehicles, for the Romantics and their successors, for defining more universal themes such as the relationship between man and society and the function of art and poetry in modern culture. To a large extent there was a mutually beneficial exchange, indeed a symbiosis, between the spatial and visual principles of the Gothic Revival and the aesthetics and values of Romanticism. This cross-fertilization occurs in four key areas--the spontaneous expression of emotion, the direct contact with nature, the primacy of the imagination, and the transcendent value of poetic and artistic creation--and these four elements, indispensable to the Romantic vision, form the basic organizational structure of the dissertation.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Comparative and World Literature

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Kostelnick, Charles John

• Literature, Comparative

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8127624

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/68335