Effective Factors in Formation of the Philosophical Formation of the Literary Genre in Romanticism

The genre theory or generic criticism is an important issues of literary theory that has been considered on literary studies since Aristotle. This is so considerable that much of the aesthetic principles of the great literary schools have been influenced by it, and the critics studying these movements have devoted part of their studies to the genre theory. Among literary schools, the contrast between the classicism and romanticism is very important in the generic theory. Previous studies addressing this have described classicism’s approach to the literary genres as technical and prescriptive and in contrast the romanticism's approaches as philosophical. However, philosophical components of the genre theory in romanticism have not been thoroughly explained. This research seeks to explain and analyze the components of this philosophical approach and the factors that influence its formation. In other words, what are the components of romanticism’s philosophical approach and what are the factors affecting that? This study shows that the classicism's approach to literary genres was questioned due to Kant's subjective philosophy and Herder's historical relativism and also the social, intellectual, and cultural changes of the Renaissance, such as the industrial revolution and humanism and factors such as historicism, consistent unity theory, attention to the poet's ingenuity in the creation of literary work, individualism, and subjective and phenomenological view led to the formation of a new genre theory in the school of Romanticism.