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Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th century Western Europe and stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from classical correctness in art forms, and rebellion against social conventions. It followed the Enlightenment period and was in part inspired by a reaction against rational and secular Enlightentment values. The Wanderer above the Snowfields by Caspar David Friedrich
1 Characteristics
A precise and general description and characterization of Romanticism has been an object of intellectual history and literary history for all of the twentieth century without any great measure of consensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy, the founder of the " history of ideas," attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of this problem in his seminal article "On The Discrimination of Romanticisms." Successive generations of scholars have engaged with this question, with some believing that a general description of Romanticism is possible, and others arguing against it. Similarly, some scholars see romanticism as completely continuous with the present, some see it as the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment, and still others date it firmly to the direct aftermath of the French Revolution. The topic is complex enough that most "characteristics" taken as defining Romanticism have also been taken as its opposite by different scholars.
Still, in common usage, Romanticism is often understood as a set of new cultural and aesthetic values. It might be taken to include the rise of individualism (the cult of the artistic genius was a prominent feature in the Romantic worship of Shakespeare and in the poetry of Wordsworth, for example); a new emphasis on common language and the depiction of apparently everyday experiences; and experimentation with new, non-classical artistic forms.
2 Origins and precursors
The term 'Romanticism' derives ultimately from the romances written during the Middle Ages ("romance" being the medieval term for works in the vernacular Romance languages rather than in LatinAlternative meanings: See Latin (disambiguation Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and ma). These included the ArthurianKing Arthur is an important figure in the mythology of Britain. He is the central character in Arthurian legends (known as the Matter of Britain), although there is disagreement about whether Arthur, or a model for him, ever actually existed and in the ea cycle, and were notable for their use of magic and fantasy, and their lofty idealism. In English, the term 'Romantick' was often used in the 18th century to mean magical, dramatic, surprising. But it was not until the German poets, critics and brothers August WilhelmAugust Wilhelm von Schlegel ( September 8, 1767 May 12, 1845), German poet, translator and critic, was born at Hanover, where his father, Johann Adolf Schlegel (1721-1793), was a Lutheran pastor. He was educated at the Hanover gymnasium and at the univers and Friedrich SchlegelKarl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel ( March 10, 1772 January 11, 1829), German poet, critic and scholar, was the younger brother of August Wilhelm von Schlegel. He was born at Hanover. He studied law at Gottingen and Leipzig, but ultimately devoted himsel used the term that it became a label for a wider cultural movement. For the Schlegel brothers, 'Romanticism' was a product of Christianity. The culture of the Middle Ages created a Romantic sensibility which differed from the Classical ideals embodied in the philosophy, poetry and drama of ancient Athens. While ancient culture admired clarity, health and harmony, Christian culture created a sense of struggle between the dream of heavenly perfection and the experience of human inadequacy and guilt. This sense of struggle, vision and ever-present dark forces was allegedly present in Medieval culture. The Schlegel brothers were also responsible for making ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 ( O. May 3, 1616 ( N. has a reputation as the greatest writer the English language has ever known. Indeed, the English Renaissance has often been called "the age of Shakespe into an internationally famous writer, translating his work into German, and promoting his plays as the epitome of the Romantic sensibility. Many later Romantic dramatists sought to imitate Shakespeare and to reject Classical models for drama.
While this view partly explains Romantic fascination with the Middle Ages, the actual causes of the Romantic movement itself correspond to the sense of rapid, dynamic social change that culminated in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. However, Romantic literature in Germany preceded these crucial historical events. The 'Sturm und Drang' (Storm and Stress) movement in German drama was associated with Friedrich SchillerJohann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller ( November 10, 1759 May 9, 1805), usually known as Friedrich Schiller was a German poet, historian, and dramatist. He was born in Marbach (located in Germany's Stuttgart Region), the son of the military doctor, J., and the early work of GoetheJohann Wolfgang von Goethe (pronounced ['go t]) ( August 28, 1749 March 22, 1832) was a German writer, politician, humanist, scientist, and philosopher. As a writer, Goethe was one of the paramount figures of German literature and European Romanticism dur, in particular his play "Goetz von Berlichingen", about a Medieval knight who resists submission to any authority beyond himself. Goethe's novel "The Sufferings of Young Werther" (1774) had huge international success. This too concerned an individual who felt a strong contradiction between his own internal world of intense feeling, and the external world that failed to correspond to it. Werther eventually commits suicide. In later works Goethe rejected Romanticism in favour of a new sense of classical harmony, integrating internal and external states.
