S.T. Coleridge and the Schlegels， Wilhelm and Friedrich

Abstract

　The ultimate concern of this essay is the clarification of the concept of Beauty， an idea of Organic Unity in Aesthetic，and also finding out how this traditional idea has been functionally transformed. My present purpose lies in revealing actual conditions which drove Coleridge and the Schlegels to advocating Romanticism; the place is set at Göttingen because Göttingen University seems to have played the important part in Romanticism.

　An explanation for choosing these critics as a theme is denoted in the Preface in view of their positions in each literary history they have occupied, and of their common background at Göttingen University where Heyne and Blumenbach gave stimulating lectures to them.

　In the article “Road to Göttingen”, the present writer takes Coleridge from England to Göttingen, describing his journey and mental attitude towards the new experiences in order to trail how Coleridge’s metaphysical passion came to be inflamed. The next article “At Göttingen University” shows the university atmosphere and tells where their consciousness of the problems lay and what kind of problems they had. The following article explains their “Approach to the Ancient and Mythology.” The problems of the Conscious and Unconscious, Memory, Reason, Imagination and Fancy are the products of mythological consciousness. They had learnt Ossian; Winckelmann’s method for the ancient, his theory on Art and Society from Heyne, and could have contact with Bürger. The last one treats the meanings and phases of the Organic Unity, describing their sense for the Unity respectively.

　This essay is nothing but an introduction to the whole theme, because their criticism on Shakespeare, their thoughts on Ossian and their consideration on the Eighteenth-Century have been left unsaid, which naturally need more intensive investigation in future.