ROMANTICISM RECONSIDERED: THE CONCEPT OF HUMANITY IN ROMANTIC LITERATURE
ROMANTICISM RECONSIDERED: THE CONCEPT OF HUMANITY IN ROMANTIC LITERATURE

Summary/Abstract: Literary theory and criticism of several recent decades have been dominated by cultural studies situating literary works within wider contexts of social, ideological and ethnic struggles. This approach naturally ignores more traditional focus on universal aspects of literary works. The article attempts to illustrate a shift from the universally human to the culturally relativistic in literary studies through a discussion of the critical evaluation of Romanticism offered by some traditional and non-traditional critical approaches to the study of literature, especially deconstruction. The paper’s main objective is to argue, using the work of William Wordsworth, that literature is, first of all, a reflection of our common humanity, not of particular ideologies.

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