BIBLIOGRAPHY
The history of the term has hardly been investigated.
Some remarks are
to be found in Pierre Moreau, Le Classi-
cisme des romantiques (Paris, 1932);
Henri Peyre, Le Classi-
cisme français (New York, 1942), Ch II,
“Le Mot Classi-
cisme,” deals with the word
“classique” and has nothing
to say about
“classicisme” as a word; Ernst Robert Curtius,
Europäische Literatur und lateinisches
Mittelalter (Bern,
1948), esp. pp. 251ff.; Harry Levin,
“Contexts of the Classi-
cal,” in his Contexts of Criticism
(Cambridge, Mass., 1957),
pp. 38-54; Georg Luck, “Scriptor
Classicus,” in Comparative
Literature,
10 (1958), 150-58; René Wellek,
“The Term and
Concept of Classicism in Literary
History,” in Aspects of
the Eighteenth
Century, ed. Earl R. Wasserman (Baltimore,
1965), pp. 105-28;
also in Proceedings of the IVth Congress
of the
International Comparative Literature Association:
Fribourg,
1964 (The Hague, 1966), pp. 1049-67.
Most other discussions of “classicism” are
analytical,
ideological, or historical. Here is a small selection: P.
Van
Tieghem, “Classique,” in Revue de synthèse historique,
41
(1931), 238-41, is purely analytical; Gerhart
Rosenwaldt,
“Zur Bedeutung des Klassischen in der bildenden Kunst,”
Zeitschrift für Aesthetik,
11 (1916), on page 125 contains
a striking
definition: Klassisch ist ein Kunstwerk das voll
kommen stilisiert ist, ohne von der Natur abzuweichen,
so
dass dem Bedürfniss nach Stilisierung und Nachahmung
in
gleicher Weise Genüge getan ist
(“A work of art is classical
that is completely stylized
without deviating from nature,
so that the requirements of both
stylization and imitation
are equally well met”); Helmut
Kuhn, “'Klassisch' als his-
torischer Begriff,” in Werner Jaeger, ed.,
Das Problem des
Klassischen und die Antike
(Stuttgart, 1933, reprint 1961),
pp. 109-28; idem,
Concinnitas: Beiträge zum Problem des
Klassischen.
Heinrich Wölfflin zum achtzigsten Geburtstag
...
zugeeignet (Basel, 1944); Kurt Herbert Halbach,
“Zum
Begriff und Wesen der Klassik,” in
Festschrift Paul Kluck-
hohn und Hermann Schneider gewidmet...
(Tübingen,
1948), pp. 166-94; Heinz Otto Burger, ed.,
Begriffsbestim-
mung der Klassik und des Klassischen, Wege der
Forschung,
Vol. 210 (Darmstadt, 1971); W. Tatarkiewicz, “Les
quatre
significations du mot 'classique,'”
Revue Internationale de
Philosophie,
43 (1958), 5-11; E. F. Carritt,
“Classicism,”
ibid., 23-36.
Fritz Ernst, Der Klassizismus in Italien, Frankreich
und
Deutschland (Zurich, 1924), is a thin sketch. Sherard Vines,
The Course of English Classicism from the Tudor to
the
Victorian Age (London, 1930), is lively but confused.
Two
books on Goethe's fame are relevant: Reinhard Buchwald,
Goethezeit und Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 1949),
and Wolfgang
Leppmann, The German Image of
Goethe (Oxford, 1961),
German version: Goethe
und die Deutschen (Stuttgart, 1962).
Three encyclopedia entries merit attention: Antonio
Viscardi,
“Classicismo” in Dizionario
letterario Bompiani
delle opere (Milan, 1947), I, 22-43;
Henri Peyre, “Le Classi-
cisme,” in Encyclopédie de la
Pléiade. Histoire des littéra-
tures (Paris, 1956), II,
110-39; and W. B. Fleischmann,
“Classicism,” in
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. A.
Preminger (Princeton, 1965), pp. 136-41.
RENÉ WELLEK
[See also
Ancients and Moderns; Baroque; Criticism;
En-
lightenment; Historicism; Mimesis; Nature; Romanticism;
Style;
Ut pictura poesis.]
