There are many who have called attention to the fact that Novalis’ view of the Middle Ages was hopelessly idealized; but those who do so miss the point, or rather, don’t see that that is the point. Novalis’ Middle Ages was the Middle Ages idealized, a metaphor for the spiritual richness of those times. Novalis wrote, Die Welt ist ein Universaltropus des Geistes, ein symbolisches Bild desselben (The world is a universal trope of the spirit, a symbolic picture of it.) Is not his golden vision of the "Middle Ages" in fact a trope of the spirit of the age?
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