CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTICISM (ca. 1800-ca. 1830)
1. THE CULTIVATION OF SENSIBILITY, EMOTION, PASSION, in opposition to classic rationality [and] common sense . . . . (The opposition appears clearly in the title of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, 1811.) The Romantics believed that the emotions, sponta 11211t194l neously released, conduce to good conduct.
2. A REVIVED INTEREST IN AND APPRECIATION OF Christianity in general and in particular of CATHOLICISM, now valued for its ritual drama and emotional power.
3. RELISH OF MEDIEVALISM. The eighteenth century had admired classical
4. ACCLAIM OF THE EXCEPTIONAL MAN, THE TRAGIC HERO, the individual genius/rebel who defies society's conventions--the type soon to be known as "Byronic." The experiences of the exceptional man were bound to be exceptional; hence the Romantic writers favored plots of violent melodrama.
5. TASTE FOR THE MYSTERIOUS, THE FANTASTIC, THE SUPERNATURAL (AND THE NON-EUROPEAN). The rationalist mood of the early eighteenth century had sought scientific clarity and had [had contempt for] the miraculous, in faith and life. The Romantics restored the miraculous, perhaps more for its artistic opportunities than out of conviction. Romanticism gives birth to the "Gothic novel"--for example, Frankenstein.
6. APPRECIATION OF NATURE, on philosophical
as well as aesthetic grounds. Eighteenth-century literature, even poetry,
had been predominantly an urban literature. The predecessors of the
Romantics, the pre-Romantics, opened their eyes to the beauty of wild nature,
and described it with loving exactness. They found a harmony between
nature and man; nature is good, and man is good insofar as he cleaves to her. .
. .
7. RESPECT FOR THE SIMPLE, PRIMITIVE MAN,
representative of "THE FOLK." Rejecting the aristocratism of
the past, the pre-Romantics and the Romantics found inspiration in the virtues,
sufferings, and emotional dramas of the common man, and in those of "the
noble savage," uncorrupted by civilization. A mystical regard for
DAS VOLK, especially in
8. CONTEMPT FOR THE BOURGEOIS, THE
MIDDLE CLASS man, who is by definition money-grubbing and materialistic,
lacking the defiantly unconventional high-mindedness admired by the romantics.
Here's another definition of Romanticism (from WebMuseum,
Paris: https://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/romanticism/);
you will see that it stresses the same characteristics already listed.
[Romanticism was an]artistic and intellectual movement that originated in
the late 18th century and stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from
classical correctness in art forms, and rebellion against social conventions.
Romanticism [was an] attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized
many works of literature, painting, music, [and] architecture . . . 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.
Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a
deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of
emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect; . . . a preoccupation
with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure in general, and a focus
on his passions and inner struggles; a new view of the artist as a supremely
individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict
adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures; an emphasis upon
imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth; an
obsessive interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and
the medieval era; and a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the
mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the
satanic.
Of interest is Bertrand Russell's discussion of Romanticism in History of
Western Philosophy (
When, in 1815, the political world returned to tranquillity,
it was a tranquillity so
dead, so rigid, so hostile to all vigorous life, that only terrified
conservatives could endure it. Consequently . . . nineteenth-century
revolt . . . took two forms. On the one hand, there was the revolt of
industrialism . . . . Quite different from this was the romantic revolt,
which was in part reactionary, in part revolutionary. The romantics did
not aim at peace and quiet, but at vigorous and passionate individual
life. They had no sympathy with industrialism because it was ugly,
because money-grubbing seemed to them unworthy of an immortal soul, and because
the growth of modern economic organizations interfered with individual liberty.
. . . The romantic movement is characterized, as
a whole, by the substitution of aesthetic for utilitarian standards. The
earth-worm is useful, but not beautiful; the tiger is beautiful, but not
useful. Darwin (who was not a romantic) praised the earth-worm; Blake
praised the tiger. But in order to characterize the romantics, it is necessary
to take account, not only of the importance of aesthetic motives, but also of
the change of taste which made their sense of beauty different from that of
their predecessors. Of this, their preference for Gothic architecture is
one of the most obvious examples. Another is their taste in scenery.
Dr. Johnson preferred Fleet Street to any rural landscape, and maintained that
a man who is tired of
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