Romantic Orpheus

Romantic Orpheus: Profiles of Clemens Brentano by John F. Fetzer offers the first comprehensive English-language study of Clemens Brentano (1778–1842), one of the most versatile and influential writers of German Romanticism. A poet, novelist, and critic, Brentano was central to the early Romantic movement from its beginnings around 1797 through its dominance on the literary scene for the next three decades. Fetzer introduces Anglophone readers to Brentano’s complex literary persona through the lens most congenial to both the author and his generation: the intimate interplay between music and literature. Organized around the myth of Orpheus, the book traces Brentano’s transformation across crises of continuity, conscience, and communication. Fetzer explores how Brentano “musicalized” literary criticism, life, and literature itself—whether through symbolic uses of instruments, meditations on harmony and dissonance, or experiments with synesthesia and lyric musicality. Drawing on unpublished manuscripts housed in the Freies Deutsches Hochstift in Frankfurt, the study reveals how Brentano’s poetic imagination was steeped in musical metaphors and how his work resonates with Romantic ideals of unity, transformation, and the fusion of the arts. An appendix provides a chronological overview of Brentano’s life and major writings, with titles in both German and English translation, making the book accessible to those encountering him for the first time. Carefully translated quotations and sensitive analysis make Romantic Orpheus an indispensable introduction to a figure long overlooked outside Germany. This volume will appeal to scholars of Romanticism, comparative literature, musicology, and anyone interested in the enduring dialogue between poetry and music. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.