CfP Between XVI.31 (May 2026). “Sympoetry: Morphologies of Global Romanticism”

Edited by:
Simona Beccone (University of Pisa), Sofia Morabito (University of Pisa), Daniela Pierucci (University of Pisa), Matteo Zupancic (University of Pisa).

Submission deadline: 30 November 2025.
Peer-review (est.): February 2026.
Publication Date: 30 May 2026.

Studies on Romanticism have long since revealed the intrinsically plural nature of the movement (Lovejoy 1924). However, there is still an indefinable, though undeniable, 'family air' spread among its various local manifestations (Wellek 1963). This suspension between identity and difference has allowed the explicit adoption of transnational and transdisciplinary approaches (Chao/Corrigan 2019), and Romanticism itself, by virtue of its migratory vocation (Gottlieb 2014a, 2014b), is providing valuable insights for the development of Global Literary Studies (Roig-Sanz/Rotger 2022: 4). Nevertheless, the attempts for a morphology of global Romanticism have made little progress beyond the iconic formulation with which René Wellek tried to describe «its essence and nature»: «that attempt, doomed to failure and abandoned by our time, to identify subject and object, to reconcile man and nature, consciousness and unconsciousness by poetry» (Wellek 1963: 221).

Both the collective plurality and the aspiration to a totalising union are found, in fact, already starting from the aesthetic ideal of symphilosophy (Symphilosophie) and sympoetry (Sympoesie) with which Friedrich Schlegel described the shared authorship characteristic of Jenese Romanticism (Marola 2024) and having in the permanent think-tanks of magazines such as the Athenaeum its privileged place of expression (Rossi 2023: 142-160). Transcending the mere socio-aesthetic component, the semantic aspect of the Grecian prefix syn- opens at the same time the synthetic and syncretic dimension of the movement, the one which, while aspiring to universalism, always remained aware of its irresolvable character, indefinitely progressive (progressive Universalpoesie). Syn- therefore seems to operate as an attractive force, able at most to retain, maintaining in tension, the most disparate dialectical poles: nationalism (Leerssen 2013) and globalism, specialisation and inter/transdisciplinarity (Faflak/Wright 2016: 325-390), theory of genres and hybridisation of genres (Duff 2009; Michler 2015: 348-466), poetics of genius and the society of letters (Henrich 1991; Mulsow/Stamm 2005), individual and community, subject and natural environment (Bate 1991; Hall 2016; Rigby 2023). Like the method adopted by Dorit Messlin for the study of Frühromantik (Messlin 2011: 24), although determined diachronic and geographically, the magnetic field of Sympoetry could also delineate a synchronous structural complex, whose dialectical vitality would lend itself to the crossing of national and continental borders, adapting plastically to the instances of heterogeneous ethnic and cultural identities. If already Helmut Hühn and Joachim Schiedermaier had complained about the lack of attention to the potential inherent in the ubiquitous prefix syn- and how it could inspire not only an interdisciplinary trajectory but also a reflection on a pan-European Romantic paradigm (Hühn/Schiedermaier 2015: 5), we believe that the Sympoetry, outlined as a morphological criterion, can lend itself to an even more versatile interoperability, connecting, while distinguishing, the individual phenotypic manifestations of movement on a planetary scale, from European Romanticism (1790-1830) to those that emerged in other global areas as a result of their extra-European migration (1830-1920). 

In ideal continuity with the Synkritik, the collective critical-textual work, this issue aims to bring together experts from different national literatures (Italy, France, Spain, South America, Great Britain, United States, Germany, Poland, Portugal) to investigate the Romantic lyric as a testing ground for a sympoetic morphology of global Romanticism: a tensive field of negotiation and modulation of antithetical poles, laboratory of identity and differences. Contributions are encouraged to explore the following aspects of the Schlegelian category:

• Sympoetry as global poetry (European/extra-European, Global Romanticism, Orientalism)
• Sympoetry as total poetry (specialisation and hybridisation of the fields of knowledge, encyclopaedia, art and science)
• Sympoetry as hybrid poetry (differentiation and mixing of literary genres, fragmentation, romantic irony)
• Sympoetry as poet-ensemble (author constellations, circulation networks, cultural transfer, translations) Sympoetry as community poetising (negotiation of national identities, folklore)
• Sympoetry as symbiosis (Green Romantics, man-environment relationship, Naturphilosophie)

 

Guidelines for paper presentation

Articles ready for publication (no longer than 40,000 characters, including spaces, paginated on the provided Template) and accompanied by the abstract and metadata (author’s name and surname, e-mail address, title of the submission, keywords: minimum 5, maximum 7; author’s bio-bibliographical profile) must be sent to the journal by 30 November 2025, following the instructions on the Submissions page of Between’s website. Accepted articles will be published on 30 May 2026 (issue 31).

Submissions are accepted in Italian and English; bilingual submissions will also be accepted. Submissions in a language other than Italian and bilingual submissions are appreciated and encouraged, especially for papers relating to foreign authors.

Please remember that authors must supply an English version of their proposal’s metadata in addition to the submission’s original language.

Title’s maximum length: 220 characters, including spaces.

Abstract’s maximum length: 200 words.

Author bio’s maximum length: 150 words. Author bio should include name and surname, professional title and institution, email address, areas of interest and research, and no more than five publications cited concisely: Title (year of publication).

In case of any doubts and/or further information, do not hesitate to email the editors.

 

Suggested Bibliography

Álvarez Barrientos, Joaquín, «La misión del poeta romántico», Romanticismo, 7: Actas del VII Congreso (Nápoles, 23-25 de marzo de 1999). La poesía romántica, Il Capitello del Sole, Bologna 2000, pp. 11-19.

Bate, Johnatan, Romantic Ecology. Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition, Routledge, London 1991.

Chao, Shun-liang – Corrigan, John Michael (ed. by), Romantic Legacies. Transnational and Transdisciplinary Contexts, Routledge, New York 2019.

Comellas, Mercedes, «Genio romántico e imagen autorial desde los inicios del siglo XIX hasta Espronceda», Bulletin hispanique [En ligne], 121-2, 2019.

Comellas, Mercedes, «Nación, historia y canon literario en la prensa decimonónica. El "Siglo de Oro" visto por los románticos», Cahiers de civilisation espagnole contemporaine [En línea], SPÉCIAL 5, 2024.

Coupe, Laurence, The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism, Routledge, London-New York 2000.

Duff, David, Romanticism and the Uses of Genre, Oxford University Press, New York 2009.

Faflak, Joel – Wright, Julia M. (ed. by), A Handbook of Romanticism Studies, Blackwell, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex 2012.

Ferri Coll, José María, Enrique Rubio Cremades, «La poesía española romántica entre lo nacional y lo europeo», in La Península romántica: El Romanticismo europeo y las letras españolas del XIX, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, Alicante 2014, págs. 31-47.

Flitter, Derek, Spanish Romanticism and the Uses of History. Ideology and the Historical Imagination, Taylor & Francis, Oxon 2006.

Flitter, Derek, Teoría y crítica del romanticismo español, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK) 1996.

Gottlieb, Evan (ed. by), Global Romanticism. Origin, Orientation, and Engagements, Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, PA 2014a.

Gottlieb, Evan, Romantic Globalism. British Literature and Modern World Order, 1750–1830, Ohio State University Press, Columbus 2014b.

Hall, Dewey W. (ed. by), Romantic Ecocriticism. Origins and Legacies. Lexington Books, Lanham et al. 2016.

Henrich, Dieter, Konstellationen: Probleme und Debatten am Ursprung der idealistischen Philosophie (1789-1795), Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1991.

Hühn, Helmut – Schiedermaier, Joachim, Romantik und Romantikforschung heute, in Europäische Romantik. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven der Forschung, hrsg. v. dens., De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston 2015, S. 3-16.

Leerssen, Joep (ed. by), Notes toward a Definition of Romantic Nationalism, in «Romantik. Journal for the Study of Romanticisms», vol 2, 1 (2013), pp. 9-35.

Lovejoy, Arthur O., On the Discrimination of Romanticisms, in «PMLA», Vol. 39, 2 (1924), pp. 229-253.

Marola, Francesco, Sympoesie: universalismo e modello greco antico nell’autorialità collettiva del primo romanticismo tedesco, in L’autorialità polimorfica. Dall’aedo all’algoritmo, a cura di Massimo Fusillo et al., ETS, Pisa 2024, pp. 129-138.

Messlin, Dorit, Antike und Moderne. Friedrich Schlegels Poetik, Philosophie und Lebenskunst, De Gruyter, Berlin-New York 2011.

Michler, Werner, Kulturen der Gattung. Poetik im Kontext, 1750-1950, Wallstein, Göttingen 2015.

Mulsow, Martin – Stamm, Marcelo (hrsg. v.), Konstellationsforschung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 2005.

Navas Ruiz, Ricardo, «El canon poético en España de 1830 a 1837», in Luis F.Díaz Larios [et al.] (eds.), La elaboración del canon en la literatura española del siglo XIX, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona 2002, pp. 299-312.

Reinfandt, Christoph, Englische Romantik. Eine Einführung, Erich Schmidt, Berlin 2008.

Rigby, Kate, Sympoesie. Potentiation, Conviviality and Collaboration in Romantic Ecopoetics, in Romantische Ökologien, ed. by Roland Borgards, Frederike Middelhoff, Barbara Thums, J.B. Metzler, Berlin-Heidelberg 2023, pp. 207-225.

Roig-Sanz, Diana – Rotger, Neus (ed. by), Global Literary Studies. Key Concepts, De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston 2022.

Rossi, Francesco, L’età romantica Letteratura tedesca tra Rivoluzione e Restaurazione, Carocci, Roma 2023.

Wellek, René, Concepts of Criticism, Yale University Press, New Haven-London 1963.