Overall this is a good overview of the Romantic movement and its historical contexts; the reaction against the excesses of the French Revolution and the almost antiseptic reason of the Enlightenment created a wealth of art, literature, and music based on medieval mythology and nascent forms of nationalism. However I feel that the author maintains a rather narrow analysis; for instance, colonialism is rarely mentioned despite its impact on the era and even more lacking is any discussion of race. Just as "racial" theories informed Enlightenment discourse, the construction of whiteness in the face of colonial brutality and excess impacted the Romantics. To ignore the imperial project and it's wide-ranging impacts on European thought and aesthetics gives a very narrow interpretation of the era.

However, this book is an accessible and interesting introduction to Romanticism. ( )

Tim Blanning's "The Romantic Revolution" is, in many ways, a good and informative book, but it brought up more questions for me than it answered, though this might have a lot to do with my relative ignorance of its subject. Still, the author does a good job of showing how the movement emerged as a rejection of the Enlightenment's overreach: his description of how stale classicism and Academy-approved painting had gotten by Romanticism's advent is very memorable. He effectively illustrates how fervently many Romantics believed in the inventive power of the human imagination. Still, I also get the feeling that what might be called some of the twentieth century's worst habits, such as rampant nationalism, particularly of the German variety, and the elevation of the cult of the artist had their origins in the Romantic movement. I might have liked to hear more about whether the original Romantics had any influence on the Modernists, who also reacted against an overly stringent rationalism, and the Nazis, seeing that Hitler's own taste in painting was apparently decidedly romantic and Wagner's influence on the movement is taken as axiomatic. Still, Blanning is sympathetic to the movement as a whole, and portrays it as a necessary artistic counter-current that produced a great deal of worthwhile and influential art. ( )

This is a delightful survey of Romanticism from Rousseau to Wagner, then with an epilogue that races up to the 1960s. Blanning seems to look at the evolution of these intellectual and artistic movements through a Hegelian lens. That is certainly an effective approach to see how each movement builds on and reacts to its past.

What I really liked about this book is that it shows a lot of the diversity within movements. Romantic thinkers could be aligned with nationalism, inspired by the deep roots of local myths. Then as nationalism solidifies into authoritarianism, romantic thinkers could rally to revolutionary movements, to the barricades in the streets.

Blanning defines romanticism as a movement that cultivates and celebrates inwardness, subjectivity. And of course that explains the diversity: inwardness can blur into impulsiveness or libertine living, for example. Was Byron more a romantic personality than a romantic poet? Blanning says his poetry is more like that of Pope than like that of Wordsworth or Keats.

This is a short book - 182 pages - that covers a lot of material. So it does race along, touching on points rather than arguing them or examining them in depth. But we do get a rather complete sketch, covering a wide range of the romantic phenomenon. The book is a tasty appetizer, not a meal. It should be an excellent introduction and orientation, enabling the reader to jump into deeper material and see where it fits into the bigger picture. ( )