7 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
German composer who wrote the 9 symphonies, the late string quartets, and the piano sonatas — becoming deaf before completing his greatest works — making him the archetypal example of the artist whose suffering is inseparable from the transcendence of their art.
British novelist — author of Frankenstein — daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft — wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley — who wrote the founding text of science fiction at age 18 during a ghost story contest.
English Romantic poet who wrote Prometheus Unbound, Ode to the West Wind, and Adonais — expelled from Oxford for atheism, radical in politics and love — and who drowned at 29 in the Bay of La Spezia, making him one of the great tragic poets of the English canon.
German composer who created the music drama — the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) combining music, poetry, and visual spectacle — in operas including Tristan und Isolde, the Ring cycle, Parsifal, and Die Meistersinger — and who was Nietzsche's model of genius before becoming his symbol of decadence.
Victor Hugo's 1831 Gothic Romantic novel set in 15th-century Paris — following Quasimodo the bell-ringer, Esmeralda the dancer, and the archdeacon Frollo — which also argued passionately for the preservation of Gothic architecture against modernization.
French Romantic novelist and poet whose Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame are among the most widely read novels in history — combining literary ambition with social advocacy for the poor and political commitment to republican democracy.
British essayist and critic — the greatest essayist in the English language after Montaigne according to many assessments — whose essays on painting, literature, and character combined personal passion with critical intelligence in a way that has not been surpassed.