The essays collected in this issue come as close as one can come, in this country, to the format of what is referred to, in Germany, as an Arbeitsgruppe, an ongoing seminar oriented toward open research rather than directed by a single authoritative voice. Some of the papers originated in a year-long seminar sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities conducted at Yale during the academic year of 1977–78. It was entitled “The Rhetoric of Romanticism,” and the title seemed suitable enough to be retrained in this expanded version of the initial group. The additional papers were often written in connection with various graduate seminars, but it would be an injustice to see in them only the products of a single “school” or orthodoxy, thus reducing their challenge to a mere anecdote. However, since it is much easier to dwell in the presence of banality than of inquiry, the tendency to stress the “group” aspect rather than the work accomplished may well prevail. This would be unfortunate, for whatever characterizes these papers as the recognizable products of a common workshop is their least important aspect. Most, though not all, of the authors are indeed at the onset of their productions, and this fact has its influence on the choice of the authors and texts that are being singled out; of all the coercion exercises by graduate instruction, none is more tyrannical than the predetermination of the textual canon. Yet, both in what these papers have in common and in what sets them apart from each other, something is happening that is by no means confined to the idiosyncrasies of a particular configuration of individuals.