 Romanticism is an artistic way of thinking which developed thanks to some precursors in Germany with Goethe and Schiller, in England with William Blake and in France with Rousseau, Chateaubriand and Stendhal. The whole Europe will follow. If it is possible to draw a certain number of common characteristics to different romanticisms, the most difficult is the definition of their genesis especially if we want to consider the importance of an "esoteric legacy" which favored their opening.
To Emile Poulat, to interrogate the relations between romanticism and esotericism makes us penetrate a world almost unexplored.
This emptiness is, to him, the occasion of talk about the insufficiency of our indexation or literal classifications. It would be a little bit rash to pass from the middle ages to classicism and to classicism to romanticism erasing all the complexity of the roots of this one.
Because the 18th century, "the century nameless", is very important!
 
So it's that space, that terra incognita, between classicism and romanticism that to one has to explore. A rich and contrasted period where rationalism of the encyclopedists doesn't prevent great flourishing of Illuminism and where light reason of Voltaire will be exposed to the theosophic vision of Louis-Claude de Saint Martin… To Emile Poulat, if one is to get out of the dead end, it is necessary to go beyond the problematic Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) since the true debate is between thomist reason and secularized reason, or two conceptions of reason. "What we really lack is a history of Reason, Reason as a historical notion " he asserts...
In this brilliant presentation, Emile Poulat gives reflexion and analysis tracks, giving back to this time all its flavor and his complexity. Since to fill in this gap and create links between romanticism and esotericism, it is necessary to explore the century of the Age of Enlightenment in its ambiguity, getting away from schematic shortcuts and establishing bridges between every field of art and knowledge, from literature to painting, from prehistory to exegese of Apocalypse...
A 39 minutes presentation filmed at La Sorbonne, Paris, within the context of the conferences Politiqua Hermetica, organized by Jean-Pierre Laurant.
Show Other videos Of Emile Poulat
|
