Introduction: Theorizing Rock/Historicizing Romanticism

Abstract

The introduction to Rock and Romanticism: Post-Punk, Goth, and Metal as Dark Romanticisms surveys the complicated history of the term “Romanticism” and then introduces Michael Löwy’s and Robert Sayre’s Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity as presenting a plausible definition of Romanticism that makes possible the incorporation of rock music under its umbrella. Defining Romanticism as an essentially emotional reaction to a modernity that is inherently capitalist, this introduction makes careful distinctions among the terms “Romanticism,” “Enlightenment,” and “Marxism” and then suggests that the historical conditions following World War II are meaningfully similar to those of eighteenth-century Europe. It then explains this volume’s focus on the Gothic and its relationship to Romanticism and discusses the tradition of the Female Gothic as it summarizes each chapter.