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The Romantic Revolution Tim Blanning Summary

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Tim Blanning is a leading scholar in the Enlightenment through the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. In his book “The Romantic Revolution” he argues that we must “... Enter the world of the romantics by the routes they chose themselves”.[ Tim Blanning, The romantic revolution, (London, 2010)
] This mean that to fully understand the romantic era we must know or experience it’s many appearances in literature, music and art. His book is filled with references to operas, paintings and novels from the time of the Romantic Revolution. The word “revolution” is usually associated with the likes of the French Revolution or the American Revolution, but Blanning, in his book deals with a different, less dramatic revolution; a revolution of the mind.

The romantic revolution is not easy to describe, Hegel comes the closest as he describes the period as one of “absolute inwardness”.[ Tim Blanning, The romantic revolution, (London, 2010)
] The book is divided into two main ideas both relating to romanticism. The idea of Romanticism as a revolution and as Hegel’s “absolute inwardness”. The central insight of the book is that “European culture has not repeated itself …show more content…

His vast list of sources and evidence really strengthen his argument that there was in fact a revolution of ideas and feelings in the early 19th century.
Tim Blanning’s argument that there was a revolution in sentiment and ideas in the early nineteenth century is very convincing, he is a leading scholar in this area and has published many books on the topic before. He has an extensive knowledge of art, music and literature as well as a broad knowledge in politics and social history of the 18th and 19th centuries which greatly influence his argument of there being a “Romantic Revolution” that he believed was just as important as the Industrial Revolution of 1789 or the Political Revolutions of France in

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