(1825–83)—duly paid attention. Swedish archaeologists were quick to include
the new material into their chronological scheme (Romer 2001: 29–31).
MEDIEVALISM IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURYAs seen in the Scandinavian case, the early nineteenth century inherited from
the years of the Enlightenment not only a taste for the classical, but also for
the medieval (Chapter 2). This fascination for the Middle Ages would con-
tinue throughout the nineteenth century. In the early years this produced a
series of works that would come to inXuence the perceptions the European
learned classes had of their own past. The image created was not fuelled only
by antiquarians but mainly by writers and artists. The Danish poet, Adam
Oehlenschla ̈ger, mentioned above, had not been the only author looking for
inspiration in the remains of the past. In fact, medieval monuments and ruins
became a common stimulus for artists at the time. In England writers such as
Sir Walter Scott drew inspiration from Gothic monuments in novels such
asThe Lady of the Lake(1810),Ivanhoe(1819) andThe Monastery(1820). In
Germany, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) wrote a large number of
literary works dealing at least in part with the medieval period. In France the
writer Victor Hugo (1802–85) started to defend the preservation of historic
monuments, and pursued this interest in his historic novels, such asNotre-
Dame de Paris(1831). It seems signiWcant that architects such as the Prussian,
Karl Schinkel (1781–1841), who had designed buildings such as the Schau-
spielhaus (Theatre) and the Museum on the Lustgarten (the Altes Museum),
which followed the classical style, became very interested in the Gothic which
he saw as the national style (Snodin 1991).
This enthusiasm for the medieval period in general, and the Gothic in
particular, was obviously shared by the antiquarians. They inherited much from
the previous generation. The classiWcatory mood associated with the development
of the natural sciences by Carl Linnaeus (1707–78), Georges-Louis Leclerc
Count of BuVon (1707–88) and Jean-Baptiste Lamark(1744–1829) had been
taken up in archaeology by authors such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann
(Chapter 2) and in museum exhibits like, for example, those of Alexandre
Lenoir in the Museum of French Monuments. The initial establishment
of categories and their arrangement into hierarchies translated into chrono-
logical sequences. In England this had already started with works such as
James Bentham (1708–94)History and Antiquities of the Conventual Church of
Elyin 1771 and continued in the early nineteenth century with others such as
Architectural AntiquitiesandCathedral Antiquitiespublished by John Britton
The Early Search (1789–1820) 329