The horizons of romanticism, two centuries later

The story of the Romanticism sub-series of the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages illustrates the need for collaborative team efforts such as have actually been promoted by the International Comparative Literature Association to cope more adequately with the complexities of transnational cultural constellations over time. From its inception, the Romanticism sub-series has exhibited a spirit of pragmatic engagement, a will to proceed from concrete examples of literary works and cultural discourses, rather than to impose supposed norms based on pre-agreed paradigms or to privilege today’s theorizing over the past. The cooperation among some 100 researchers from some two dozen countries has yielded an intellectually open picture of how a multifaceted heritage gathers momentum and is blended into the flow of a larger cultural poly-system.