Lecture 16: The Romantic Era The categories which it has become customary to use in distinguishing and classifying "movements" in literature or philosophy and in describing the nature of the significant transitions which have taken place in taste and in opinion, are far too rough, crude, undiscriminating -- and none of them so hopelessly as the category "Romantic." ---Arthur O. Lovejoy, "On the Discriminations of Romanticisms" (1924) Ask anyone on the street: "what is Romanticism?" and you will certainly receive some kind of reply. Everyone claims to know the meaning of the word romantic. These meanings cause few problems in every day life -- indeed, few of us wonder about the meaning of Romanticism at all. The expression Romantic gained currency during its own time, roughly 1780-1850. ROMANTICISM appeared in conflict with the Enlightenment. The philosophes were too objective -- they chose to see human nature as something uniform. The period from 1793 to 1815 was a period of European war. | Table of Contents |
Untitled Document By the late 18th century in France and Germany, literary taste began to turn from classical and neoclassical conventions. The generation of revolution and wars, of stress and upheaval had produced doubts on the security of the age of reason. Doubts and pessimism now challenged the hope and optimism of the 18th century. Men felt a deepened concern for the metaphysical problems of existence, death, and eternity. It was in this setting that Romanticism was born. Origins Romanticism was a literary movement that swept through virtually every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America that lasted from about 1750 to 1870. The Romantic Style The term romantic first appeared in 18th-century English and originally meant "romancelike"-that is, resembling the fanciful character of medieval romances. Romanticism stresses on self-expression and individual uniqueness that does not lend itself to precise definition.
Romanticism Alternative titles: Romantic movement; Romantic Style Romanticism, Britannica Classic: “The Spirit of Romanticism”Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism in particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental. ... (100 of 1,783 words)
English literature: The Romantic Period At the turn of the century, fired by ideas of personal and political liberty and of the energy and sublimity of the natural world, artists and intellectuals sought to break the bonds of 18th-century convention. Although the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau and William Godwin had great influence, the French Revolution and its aftermath had the strongest impact of all. In England initial support for the Revolution was primarily utopian and idealist, and when the French failed to live up to expectations, most English intellectuals renounced the Revolution. However, the romantic vision had taken forms other than political, and these developed apace. In Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800), a watershed in literary history, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge presented and illustrated a liberating aesthetic: poetry should express, in genuine language, experience as filtered through personal emotion and imagination; the truest experience was to be found in nature.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Age: review: Summary Writers working in the time period from 1785 to 1830 did not think of themselves as “Romantics,” but were seen to belong to a number of distinct movements or schools. For much of the twentieth century scholars singled out five poets—Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Percy Shelley, and Keats—and constructed a unified concept of Romanticism on the basis of their works. Some of the best regarded poets of the time were in fact women, including Anna Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, and Mary Robinson. Yet educated women were targets of masculine scorn, and the radical feminism of a figure like Mary Wollstonecraft remained exceptional.
The Culture of Rebellion in the Romantic Era Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830. One of Delacroix’s best known works, the painting depicts a bare-breasted Liberty leading Parisians of mixed social and economic backgrounds into battle. The Romantic era is typically noted for its intense political, social, and cultural upheavals. The period is conventionally marked as beginning with the French Revolution in 1789 and ending with the passing of the Great Reform Bill in 1832, occurrences which exemplify the political zeal of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries as well as the resultant changes brought about in society. Events initially external to England, such as the French Revolution, are internalized in Romantic literature as a part of the debates on more relevant, internal issues in English politics, such as the prededing American Revolution and the imminent Irish Uprising of 1798. One key area in which the influence of the French Revolution manifests itself is in the satiric poetry of the period.
A Brief Guide to Romanticism “In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet’s thoughts are everywhere; though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge—it is as immortal as the heart of man.”—William Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads" Romanticism was arguably the largest artistic movement of the late 1700s. Its influence was felt across continents and through every artistic discipline into the mid-nineteenth century, and many of its values and beliefs can still be seen in contemporary poetry. browse poets from this movement
Romanticism Romanticism arose as a reaction against the excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment. It drew upon the French Revolution's rejection of aristocratic social and political norms. It was also influenced by the theory of evolution and uniformitarianism, which argued that "the past is the key to the present." Thus some Romantics looked back nostalgically to the sensibility of the Middle Ages and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. The ideals of the French Revolution influenced the Romantic movement in other ways. The flaw in the Enlightenment mind, represented by the moral philosophy of Kant with its overemphasis on intellect (reason) and will, was its disregard of the faculty of emotion which is so central to human life. Characteristics Did you know? Romanticism, popular from the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century, emphasized emotion and imagination in contrast to reason that was the focus of the Enlightenment Visual art and literature
About the Romantic Period The romantic period is a term applied to the literature of approximately the first third of the nineteenth century. During this time, literature began to move in channels that were not entirely new but were in strong contrast to the standard literary practice of the eighteenth century. How the word romantic came to be applied to this period is something of a puzzle. Originally the word was applied to the Latin or Roman dialects used in the Roman provinces, especially France, and to the stories written in these dialects. Romantic is a derivative of romant, which was borrowed from the French romaunt in the sixteenth century. At first it meant only "like the old romances" but gradually it began to carry a certain taint. The word passed from England to France and Germany late in the seventeenth century and became a critical term for certain poets who scorned and rejected the models of the past; they prided themselves on their freedom from eighteenth-century poetic codes.
Famous people of the Romantic Period • The Romantic period or Romantic era lasted from the end of the Eighteenth Century towards the mid 19th Century. Romanticism was a movement which highlighted the importance of: The individual emotions, feelings and expressions of artists.It rejected rigid forms and structures. Famous Romantic Poets William Blake (1757 –1827) Poet, artist and mystic. Robert Burns (1759 – 1796) Scottish romantic poet who was influential in the development of romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –1834) English romantic poet and member of the “Lakes Poets”. Lord Byron (1788 – 1824) English romantic poet, who led a flamboyant, extravagant lifestyle – travelling across Europe. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 –1822) English romantic poet, and friend to John Keats. John Keats (1795 – 1821) English Romantic poet. Writers of the Romantic period Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) German poet, playwright, and author. Sir Walter Scott (1771 – 1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet.