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)
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.
Volume D: The Romantic Period | The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Ninth Edition: W. W. Norton StudySpace Volume D The Romantic Period 1785–1832 (NAEL Vol. D) The Romantic period is short, relative to other literary periods, but is still quite complex. Revolution and Reaction England at this time was transforming from a primarily agricultural nation to one focused on manufacture, trade, and industry. The New Poetries: Theory and Practice “The Romantics” did not actually identify themselves as such. Writing in the Marketplace and the Law Courts The number of people who could read, and who wanted to read, grew dramatically during the Romantic period, particularly among those of the lower and middle classes. Other Literary Forms Although the Romantic period centered primarily on poetry, many other literary forms flourished as well, including political pamphlets, reviews, drama, and novels.
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
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.
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 |
Romantic nationalism Among the key themes of Romanticism, and its most enduring legacy, the cultural assertions of romantic nationalism have also been central in post-Enlightenment art and political philosophy. From its earliest stirrings, with their focus on the development of national languages and folklore, and the spiritual value of local customs and traditions, to the movements that would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for "self-determination" of nationalities, nationalism was one of the key issues in Romanticism, determining its roles, expressions and meanings. Historically in Europe, the watershed year for romantic nationalism was 1848, when a revolutionary wave spread across the continent; numerous nationalistic revolutions occurred in various fragmented regions (such as Italy) or multinational states (such as the Austrian Empire). Brief history[edit] The ideas of Rousseau (1712–1778) and of Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) inspired much early Romantic nationalism in Europe.
British Romanticism The Romantic period was largely a reaction against the ideology of the Enlightenment period that dominated much of European philosophy, politics, and art from the mid-17th century until the close of the 18th century. Whereas Enlightenment thinkers value logic, reason, and rationality, Romantics value emotion, passion, and individuality. Chris Baldick provides the following description: “Rejecting the ordered rationality of the Enlightenment as mechanical, impersonal, and artificial, the Romantics turned to the emotional directness of personal experience and to the boundlessness of individual imagination and aspiration” (222-3). These values manifested themselves in literature in several important ways, listed below. It is important to keep in mind that nothing on this list describes all Romantic literature or all Romantic writers. Art, as the product of individual creation, is highly prized. Famous Romantic Writers: John Keats: (1795 – 1821): Keats was the prodigy of the Romantics.
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.
Romanticism ROMANTICISM: Artistic and intellectual movement that originated in the late 18th century and stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from classical art forms, and rebellion against social conventions. Romanticism is found in many works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography, and can be defined as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century Neo-classicism in particular. It was also to a large extent a reaction against the Enlightenment against undue emphasis upon rationalism and economic materialism such as was characterized in capitalism. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental. In summation Romanticism stressed: The final set of romantic painters include the French masters: Delacroix and Gericault. .
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.
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.
Romancticism - Literature Periods & Movements Literature Network » Literary Periods » Romancticism No other period in English literature displays more variety in style, theme, and content than the Romantic Movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Furthermore, no period has been the topic of so much disagreement and confusion over its defining principles and aesthetics. Romanticism, then, can best be described as a large network of sometimes competing philosophies, agendas, and points of interest. In England, Romanticism had its greatest influence from the end of the eighteenth century up through about 1870. First and foremost, Romanticism is concerned with the individual more than with society. On the formal level, Romanticism witnessed a steady loosening of the rules of artistic expression that were pervasive during earlier times. Though struggling and unknown for the bulk of his life, poet and artist William Blake was certainly one of the most creative minds of his generation. Major Writers of the Romanticism Movement
Romanticism Artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as fear, horror and terror, and awe — especially that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublime and beauty of nature.[7][8] It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, but also spontaneity as a desirable characteristic (as in the musical impromptu). In contrast to the Rationalism and Classicism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism revived medievalism[9] and elements of art and narrative perceived as authentically medieval in an attempt to escape population growth, early urban sprawl, and industrialism. Defining Romanticism[edit] Basic characteristics[edit] The nature of Romanticism may be approached from the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. Etymology[edit] Period[edit] Context and place in history[edit] Literature[edit] Germany[edit]