Although he is primarily known as a historian of Russia, Nicholas Riasanovsky has long been a student of European Romanticism. The Emergence of Romanticism examines the origins of the Romantic movement in England and Germany and offers a new interpretation of the Romantics' goals and influence.

Riasanovsky searches for the origins of the dazzling vision that made the great early Romantic poets in England and Germany - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel - look at the world in a new way. He stresses that Romanticism was produced only by Western Christian civilization, with its unique view of man's relationship to God. The Romantics' frantic and heroic striving after unreachable goals mirrors Christian beliefs in human inability adequately to address God, speak to God, or praise God. Further, Riasanovsky argues that Romantic thought played a key role in the rise of nationalism in Europe.