| This thesis examines the defense of Christianity mounted by two major Romantics: Chateaubriand and Novalis. Attention is focused mainly on Genie du christianisme and Christenheit oder Europa. The Genie's portrait of Christianity is drawn from an "outer" 'aesthetic' perspective; the Christenheit's is drawn from an "inner" 'quasi-mystical' perspective. But each is quintessentially 'Romantic.'; Before his famous conversion, Chateaubriand was the very embodiment of the romantic youth searching for the 'transcendent' in nature: in silent and mysterious forests, in seas rising and falling to the ineffable rhythm of eternity. The Genie, 1802, emphasizes the "beauties" of Christianity (i.e., Catholicism): the chants, the rituals, the colorful processions. Furthermore, Christianity promised at least a kind of immortality, that Romantic longing of longings. Solemn rites with which the soul is sent on its final journey meld perfectly with Romantic depictions of death where death is often presented as a transitional state leading to a "higher" life.; Novalis (F. von Hardenberg) is the Romantic poet-philosopher of Christianity par excellence. For Novalis, religious knowledge was the origin of all knowledge, religion was the study of studies. The often discussed Romantic "idealization" of the Middle Ages is epitomized by the 'metahistorical' Die Christenheit oder Europa. In contrast to the fractured Europe of 1800, the Middle Ages is described as a time of Einheit when Christianity maintained its ektkatholische state. In cathedrals filled with heavenly music and aromatic incense, devout believers worshipped the Blessed Mother and her Divine Son. However, in the intervening centuries this unifying religious faith was undermined by skepticism, materialism, and atheism leading to the recent horrors in France and elsewhere. But Novalis' essay ends on a note of millenarian expectation. One must believe that the new, restored Christianity about to be born will bring moral and spiritual renovation to Europe.; As apologies, the Genie and the Christenheit had little lasting influence. They do, however, encapsulate early Romanticism's attempt to redefine religion in general, and Christianity in particular. |
