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Definition of Romanticism
Definition of Romanticism
Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) is an artistic, literary, and intellectual
movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and was at its peak in the
approximate period from 1800 to 1850.
Romanticism is characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of
all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It is a reaction to the ideas of
the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and
the scientific rationalization of nature.
The meaning of romanticism has changed with time. In the 17th century, "romantic" meant
imaginative or fictitious due to the birth of a new literary genre : the novel. Novels, that is to say texts
of fiction, were written in vernacular (romance languages), as opposed to religious texts written in
Latin.
In the 18th century, romanticism is eclipsed by the Age of Enlightenment, where everything is
perceived through the prism of science and reason.
In the 19th century, "romantic" means sentimental : lyricism and the expression of personal emotions
are emphasized. Feelings and sentiments are very much present in romantic works.
Thus, so many things are called romantic that it is difficult to see the common points between the
novels by Victor Hugo, the paintings by Eugène Delacroix or the music by Ludwig Von Beethoven.
Romanticism reached France at the beginning of the 19th century with François-René de
Chateaubriand - Atala (1801), René (1802), Le Génie du Christianisme (1802) - and Germaine de
Staël : De l'Allemagne (1813).
Romanticism was a renewal, a revolution is artistic forms in paintings, literature and theatre. In
Germany and Russia, romanticism created the national literature. It influenced the whole vision of art.
It was also the origin of contemporary ideas : modern individualism, the vision of nature, the vision of
the work of art as an isolated object.
Joseph Mallord William Turner – The Fighting Téméraire (1836)
Political dimension : the birth of Romanticism
Romanticism represents a break with the universalistic outlook of the Enlightenment. Reason is
something universal and the Enlightenment found its models in classical France and Rome : all men
are the same because there are all reasonable. Romanticism if a fragmentation of consciousness,
with no universalistic ideas left.
The French Revolution was characterized by universalistic ideas such as all men are created equal. It
corresponds to the philosophy of the Enlightenment. The nation is born out of a social contract : it
means that you are free to choose to belong to one nation or another. It is different in Germany where
you don't choose your country, that is where you were born (organic nation).
There's a difference between the first and second generation of poets. British poets were rather
progressive and close to dissenters. The French Revolution was full of hope of equality but it quickly
changed when in 1793, it gave way to the Terror and the beheading of the King.
An idealization of nature
Nature became idealized as life in the country was more virtuous. Romantic poets did not talk about
cities (but realists did). Nature was a source of poetic inspiration and gave a spiritual dimension to
life, based on the organic connection between man and nature in traditional rural society, which was
dying fast because of the Industrial Revolution (opposition between the organic/natural and the
mechanical technology). There was a regeneration of human life destroyed by cities, an idealized
vision of nature : they were looking for a renewed humanity.
Thomas Cole – The Oxbow: View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts,
after a Thunderstorm (1836)
Wordsworth and Coleridge left the city for the Lake District. In America, transcendentalists such as
Emerson or Thoreau did the same. Thoreau went out in the wilderness to Walden Pond to
write Walden in 1854.
They discovered the American identity : the civilization was European. There is a kind of individualism
that refuses every kind of moral convention (who you really are) and pantheism (belief that Nature is
divine and has a soul).
A dualistic world
Contrasts, dichotomies can be seen on all levels between reason and emotion, beautiful and sublime,
reality and imagination.
Dialectics are the dynamic principle behind everything and could be seen as a rational monism (the
antonym of "pluralism") with the religious revival and the visionary style. E.g : Wuthering Heights by
Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Anne Grey by Anne Brontë.
Wuthering Heights takes place in Yorkshire moors. Catherine Earnshaw hesitates between Heathcliff
and Edgar Linton. She chooses Edgar but Heathcliff comes back rich. There is a conflict between
what men represent and what places represent. It's the conflict of "the children of calm, the children of
the storm". The dualism is a cosmic matter between calm and quietness, storm and passion. It's the
idea of homo duplex : man is double in a "double simultaneous postulation".
A rediscovery of history and exoticism
There is a rediscovery of history and exoticism through local colour : few details to show you are not
at home (for instance, if you write about Asia, add some geishas in kimonos).
With romanticism, there is an outburst of cultural nationalism : German romanticism was a flowering
of vernacular literatures. The vernacular is the language spoken by the people; it's different from the
language spoken by the cultural elite (French, Latin). It was good enough to produce good literature.
There was also a going back to folklore, legends, and fairy tales.
Wordsworth and Coleridge both wrote lyrical ballads in 1798. In The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,
Coleridge worked on the supernatural and tells the story of a mariner who killed an albatross, which is
a very bad omen for mariners : they are all doomed.
In The Idiot Boy, Wordsworth dealt with the ordinary life and tells the story of a woman who needs
medicine for her child. She sends the idiot boy. His aim was to represent the essential passions of
human nature, to use simple language, "the select of a language, really used by men". He abandoned
the artificiality of poetic diction and the political dimension criticized by many people.
Wordsworth also wrote "conversation poems" such as Frost as midnight: blank verse monologues
addressing the listener as in a conversation. The listener is in fact the reader.
Regional poetry is another way to use the vernacular : vernacular in Scotland is different from the
vernacular in South England. See Walter Scott and Robert Burns.
Walter Scott invented the historical novel with Waverley (1814) and Ivanhoe (1819). He gave a sense
of history with accurate details and characters' destinies influenced by historical faces. The plot tells a
clash of values, of choices made in a crucial moment by a young and romantic man, through the
idealized image of a united nation. Scott tried to show reconciliation between idealism and reality.
In the USA, James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826) tells about the conflict
between France and Britain in the American colonies. The image of the Native American is that of a
noble savage, yet a "vanishing Indian" because of the progress of the American civilization.
Aesthetic dimension
See Todorov's Théories du Symbole (1977). Romanticism emphasizes imagination (as opposed to
the 18th century).
Before, art was imitation and mimesis (cf. Aristotle). There was a process of selection of things that
were worth representing and a correction of nature according to the image of beauty you had in mind
(harmony in parts and whole).
On the other hand, with romanticism, art is creation; it's an autonomous whole. It does not imitate
nature but recreates it. It is not a mirror but a different reality. This parallel world is based on the
necessary artistic relations between the different organic parts.
Thus, it is useless, there is no purpose except of recreating reality. It is gratuitous, autonomous,
unlike before when it was made to instruct and entertain with a moral quality. There is no morality in
art for the romantics.
Like nature, a work of art is an organic totality in form and meaning. The faculty it creates is
imagination. Coleridge defined fancy and imagination in The Biographia Literaria, one of his main
critical studies.
Imagination is an artistic and secondary imagination. It's the principle of unity in a work of art and
assimilates into a unifying vision. Primary imagination is the basis of perception and God-like quality:
The IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I
hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite
mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an
echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the
kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses,
dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it
struggles to idealise and unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially
fixed and dead.
Fancy is associational logic, you do not create but associate ideas :
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is
indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is
blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word
CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready
made from the law of association.
In Coleridge's Kubla Khan (1816), there's a contrast between microcosm and macrocosm : the union
of contraries makes a synthetic whole thanks to symbols, polysemy and allegories.
In Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851), the white whale is an albinos and there is an opposition
between nature and man (captain Ahab) showing the irreducible forces of nature.
The image of the artist can take several forms. He can be like a God, a creator but it comes with
strings attached such as the problem of transgression or curse. If you are like a God, you're likely to
get punished for your hubris or your disobedience to the cosmic laws, just like Prometheus. The artist
can also adopt