History Main / Romanticism

* Creator/JohnWilliamPolidori (1795-1821)

* Creator/AlessandroManzoni

Romanticism was a complex artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe. It has a complicated relationship to {{Romance}}, a term that has had many meanings, but very little to do with the current, popular definition of "romantic", i.e. that which pertains to love and courtship, although love may occasionally be the subject of Romantic works. Rather, [[UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment it is the exact counterpoint to the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment]] -- that being emotion and imagination is superior to that of reason and intellect. Think [[WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory Dee Dee instead of Dexter]]. The individual has a central role in Romantic works; they are usually in conflict with the establishment and go through internal turmoil because of this. CharacterDevelopment usually occurs. The NatureLover is a very common figure and voice in Romantic poetry.

-->--'''Johann Paul "Jean Paul" Friedrich Richter''', ''Elementary Course in Aesthetics''.

Writers active in the heyday of Romanticism include Creator/JohnKeats, Creator/LordByron, Creator/{{Mary|Shelley}} and Creator/PercyShelley, Creator/SamuelTaylorColeridge, and Creator/WilliamBlake. In the mid-19th century, just as Romanticism was beginning to wane in Europe, it hit America in a big way, becoming the Transcendentalist movement, leading lights of which include Creator/WaltWhitman and Creator/RalphWaldoEmerson. Though the "age of Romanticism" is long over, Romantic themes are still common today. Most writers and authors in the Romantic era would not necessarily feel that they were opposed to the Enlightenment, however, and the likes of Byron and Goethe would certainly believe that they were continuing in the tradition of what came before. In France, the likes of Creator/{{Stendhal}} and Creator/HonoreDeBalzac prized emotion and reason as inseparable.

[{AC:{{Art}}works]]

[[caption-width-right:350:''Youthful boys, discipline and juvenile courage the weapons of the young sailors of the [[UsefulNotes/BarbaryCoastWars United States against the older, more brute Muslim pirates.]]'']]

->''"Romanticism is beauty without bounds—the beautiful infinite, just as there is an exalted infinite... It is more than a simile to call romanticism the wavelike ringing of a string ro bell, in which the tone-wave fades into ever further distances, finally losing itself in us so that, while already silent without, it still resounds within."''

->''"Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!\\
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought!\\
That giv'st to forms and images a breath\\
And everlasting motion! not in vain,\\
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn\\
Of Childhood didst Thou intertwine for me\\
The passions that build up our human Soul,\\
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man,\\
But with high objects, with enduring things,\\
With life and nature, purifying thus\\
The elements of feeling and of thought,\\
And sanctifying, by such discipline,\\
Both pain and fear, until we recognise\\
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.\\
Nor was this fellowship vouchsaf'd to me\\
With stinted kindness. In November days,\\
When vapours, rolling down the valleys, made\\
A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods\\
At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights,\\
When, by the margin of the trembling Lake,\\
Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went\\
In solitude, such intercourse was mine;\\
'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,\\
And by the waters all the summer long."''
-->--'''Creator/WilliamWordsworth''', ''The Prelude''.

Compare with PostModernism. Related to Individualism; in some ways, the predecessor of Symbolism, where the individual is again the central (and, in most cases, only) figure. See also RomanticismVersusEnlightnement.

The Romantic movement has its fair share of contradictions. Many Romantics initially started out as quite radical and progressive before becoming conservative, such as Wordsworth. Other authors like Shelley and Byron never sold out and remained liberal to their ends, which, admittedly, came early enough--Shelley at 29, Byron at 36--that they didn't really have much of a chance to reevaluate their opinions; both, incidentally, died in very "romantic" ways, with Shelley's boat being destroyed by a storm and Byron dying of a fever while in the midst of fighting for one of the great liberal causes of the age, the liberation of Greece. Romanticism had its source in the ugliness of the colonialism which thrived during this time, where the AdventureArchaeologist would constantly "rediscover" earlier cultures but write off the modern day nations as TheRemnant, thereby justifying their continuous economic exploitation of these regions.

Compare with PostModernism. Related to Individualism; in some ways, the predecessor of Symbolism, where the individual is again the central (and, in most cases, only) figure. See also RomanticismVersusEnlightement.

Compare PostModernism. Related to Individualism; in some ways the predecessor of Symbolism, where the individual is again the central (and, in most cases, only) figure.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/decatur_boarding_the_tripolitan_gunboat.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''Youthful boys, discipline and juvenile courage the weapons of the young sailors of the [[UsefulNotes/BarbaryCoastWars United States against the older, more brute Muslim pirates.]]'']]

And by the waters all the summer long.\\
-->-- '''Creator/WilliamWordsworth''', ''The Prelude''.

->''"A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths."''
-->-- '''Creator/AlexanderPushkin'''

* Creator/HenryWadsworthLongfellow