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My research examines how Romantic philosophical, social, and esoteric motifs come full circle from Enlightenment-era exile to modern disillusionment.
Romanticism’s reaction to the Enlightenment’s logical, scientific nature involved a regression to past fascinations with the bizarre and the supernatural. The Romantics found that the Commedia dell’Arte theater embodied such qualities, and artists and writers aligned themselves with figures such as Harlequin and Pierrot to emphasize buffoonery, the grotesque, and comic despair. Initially, this paper investigates how Commedia dell’Arte-inspired characters such as E. T. A. Hoffmann’s composer Johannes Kriesler and Victor Hugo’s poet Pierre Gringoire may be signifiers for their authors. Through characterization and mirroring devices, these writers infused their own personality into their stories, mixing art, performance, and life—a synthesis that resurfaces in the visual arts. Several paintings of Commedia
dell’Arte figures emphasize how the Romantics and their followers aligned themselves with theatrical personalities. Artists painted self-portraits as Harlequin, including Cézanne and Picasso—who often created grim portraits of himself and others as performers. These characters’ continued popularity as different aspects of the creative personality signifies artists’ sacrificial isolation from society while weathering the shifting tide of popular favor, and perhaps also their contempt for those who cannot comprehend their imagination and eccentricity. Offering examples of the continuation of Commedia dell’Arte iconography in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century art, my research examines how Romantic philosophical, social, and esoteric motifs come full circle from Enlightenment-era exile to modern disillusionment.
