RomanticismA Movement Across

the Arts

Historical background : 

• a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassicism reason

•  negative attitude towards the existing social and political conditions. Core --- reaction against neoclassicism Time 

• French Revolution, the storming of Bastille --- Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: glorify human nature; claim for social democracy

• fight against tyranny

DefinitionRomanticism refers to a movement in

art, literature, and music during the 19th century.

Romanticism is characterized by the 5 “I”sImaginationIntuition and emotionsIdealismInspirationIndividuality

ImaginationImagination was emphasized over

“reason.”This was a backlash against the

rationalism characterized by the Neoclassical period or “Age of Reason.”

Imagination was considered necessary for creating all art.

British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it “intellectual intuition.”

IntuitionRomantics placed value on “intuition,”

or feeling and instincts, over reason.Emotions were important in Romantic

art.British Romantic William Wordsworth

described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

“I felt before I thought”

IdealismIdealism is the concept that we can

make the world a better place.

InspirationThe Romantic artist, musician, or

writer, is an “inspired creator” rather than a “technical master.”

What this means is “going with the moment” or being spontaneous, rather than “getting it precise.”

IndividualityRomantics celebrated the individual.During this time period, Women’s

Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as major movements.

Walt Whitman, a later Romantic writer, would write a poem entitled “Song of Myself”: it begins, “I celebrate myself…”

OriginsRomanticism began to take root as a

movement following the French Revolution.

The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1792 is considered the beginning of literary Romanticism.

poets

• poets often saw themselves as prophets in a time of crisis, trying to create “heaven” on earth.

•  A poet is man "of more than unusual organic sensibility." 

poetic composition

act of poetic composition

• must arise from impulse;

• be free from the rules inherited from the past;

• and rely on instinct, intuition, & feeling.

INDIVIDUALISM

• Human beings were seen as essentially noble & good (though corrupted by society),

• and as possessing great power & potential that had formerly been ascribed only to god.

The Rainbow  by WordworthMY heart leaps up when I behold

 A rainbow in the sky: 

So was it when my life began; 

So is it now I am a man; 

So be it when I shall grow old,

 Or let me die! 

The Child is father of the Man;

 I could wish my days to be

 Bound each to each by natural piety.

Daffodils by Wordsworth

• I wandered lonely as a CloudThat floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,When all at once I saw a crowdA host of dancing Daffodils;Along the Lake, beneath the trees,Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

The waves beside them danced, but theyOutdid the sparkling waves in glee: --A poet could not but be gayIn such a laughing company:I gazed—and gazed—but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:

• For oft when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude,And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the Daffodils.

• The Sick Rose

O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: 

Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. 

• 'Tis hard to say, if greater Want of Skill• Appear in Writing or in Judging ill,• But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' Offence,• To tire our Patience, than mis-lead our Sense• Some few in that, but Numbers err in this,• Ten Censure wrong for one who Writes amiss;• A Fool might once himself alone expose,• Now One in Verse makes many more in

Prose. ... (1–8)

While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,

With sure returns of still expected rhymes;

Wher'er you find "the cooling western breeze",

In the next line, it "whispers through the trees“

;If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep",

The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep" . . . (347–353)