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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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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


456

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.]