Alger 2 University/Department of English/Academic year: 2021-2022

Level: Second Year LMD

Teacher: Soumia BENNANI

Objective:
Romanticism as a literary movement

Introduction
Classicism vs. Romanticism
“After the end of the 18th century, 'classical' came to be contrasted with 'romantic' …While partisans
of Romanticism associated the classical with the rigidly artificial and the romantic with the freely
creative, the classicists condemned romantic self-expression as eccentric self-indulgence, in the
name of classical sanity and order. The great German writer. W. von Goethe summarized his
conversion to classical principles by defining the classical as healthy, the romantic as sickly. Since
then, literary classicism has often been less a matter of imitating Greek and Roman models than of
resisting the claims of Romanticism and all that it may be thought to stand for (Protestantism,
liberalism, democracy, anarchy)…” (Baldick 41-42)

Right or Wrong Concepts

Romanticism is a literary movement but as a term, it is corrupted and often connoted with
chocolate, Valentine’s Day and modern ‘love’ rituals.

Historical background and roots

There are several reasons for the growth of the Romantic Movement in English literature in the
early 19th century:
1- A revolt against the neoclassical movement and its confinement to the scientific rationalization of
nature and its radical objectivity which neglected the non-physical world.
2- Revival of interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry. The emergence of
Romanticism has been attributed to several developments in late 18th-century culture, including a
strong antiquarian interest in ballads and medieval romances (from which Romanticism takes its
name).
3- A new emphasis on the beauty and value of nature; one motion over reason; and on the
individual over institutions like the church and state.
4- Influence of the Gothic novel, novel of sensibility and graveyard poets of the 18th-century,
whose works are characterized by their gloomy meditations on mortality, "skulls and coffins,
epitaphs and worms" in the context of the graveyard.
5- The changing landscape and the pollution of the environment, brought about by the industrial and
agricultural revolutions, with the expansion of the city.
6- Social changes, such as depopulation of the countryside and the rapid development of
overcrowded industrial cities that took place in the period between 1750 and 1850.

Characteristics of Romanticism
1-Reverence/ Respect of nature as a resource for inspiration and as a means to achieve harmony
2-Predominance of emotion over reason and of the senses and intuition over the intellect
(subjectivity) Rejecting the ordered rationality of the enlightenment as mechanical, impersonal,
and artificial, the Romantics turned to the emotional directness of personal experience and to the
boundlessness of individual imagination and aspiration.
3-Importance of individuality and of self-expression (subjectivity and originality)
4- Power of imagination and spontaneity which promote creative vision for the artist.
5-Unusual settings with magical or mythic elements
6-Supernaturalismin the depiction of the setting and the characters
7-Focus on the spiritual and moral development supported by Christian symbolism
Romanticism’ Themes and Concerns
*Faith, integrity, sacrifice, sincerity
*The interaction between man and nature
*Psychological effects of guilt and sin
*An interest in the world of dreams and the non-physical world such as God, the soul, spirits and
the afterlife.

Romanticism, (1798–1837) “a sweeping but indispensable modern term applied to the profound
shift in Western attitudes to art and human creativity that dominated much of European culture in
the first half of the 19th century, and that has shaped most subsequent developments in literature—
even those reacting against it. In its most coherent early form, as it emerged in the 1790s in
Germany and Britain, and in the 1820s in France and elsewhere; it is known as the Romantic
Movement or Romantic Revival. Its chief emphasis was upon freedom of individual self-
expression: sincerity, spontaneity, and originality became the new standards in literature, replacing
the decorous imitation of classical models favoured by 18th-century neoclassicism.” (Baldick 223)
In short, Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that refers to a new
set of ideas that began in Western Europe in the second half of the18th century in the works of
artists, poets and philosophers. It subsequently spread all over the world changing the way (shift in
the consciousness) people look at nature and other issues. The movement’s beginning is often
marked by the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 and its end by the crowning of Queen Victoria
in 1837.
The writers of this period, however, did not think of themselves as ‘Romantics’. The
landscape is often prominent in the poetry of this period, so that the Romantics are often described
as 'nature poets'. Notable English Romantic writers include: William Blake, Jane Austen, Percy
Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and Lord Byron, (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge had
revolutionized English poetry by publishing Lyrical Ballads). The German group including the
Schlegel brothers and Novalis—was the transcendental philosophy of Kant and Fichte, which
stressed the creative power of the mind and allowed nature to be seen as a responsive mirror of the
soul.

The Romantic Period in American Literature

It is worth-mentioning that Transcendentalism is the precursor for Romanticism in the USA.

The Transcendentalist movement was a reaction against 18th-century rationalism and a

manifestation of the general humanitarian trend of 19th-century thought. The movement was based
on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. The soul of each individual was thought
to be identical with the world — a microcosm of the world itself. Its doctrines of self-reliance and
individualism developed through the belief in the identification of the individual soul with God.

This new German thinking spread via S. T. Coleridge to Britain and via Mme de Stael to France,
eventually shaped American transcendentalism.

American Transcendental Romantics pushed radical individualism to the extreme. American writers
often saw themselves as lonely explorers outside society and convention. The American hero —
like Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab, or Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, or Edgar Allan Poe’s Arthur
Gordon Pym — typically faced risk, or even certain destruction, in the pursuit of metaphysical self-
discovery (E.g. Captain Ahab faced the whale Moby Dick, Huck Finn faced the danger of violating
the law by running away with a slave). There was tremendous pressure to discover an authentic
literary form, content, and voice — all at the same time.

In the case of the novelists, the Romantic vision tended to express itself in the form Hawthorne
called the “romance,” a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the novel. Romances were not
love stories, but serious novels that used special techniques to communicate complex and subtle
meanings. Instead of carefully defining realistic characters through a wealth of detail, as most
English or continental novelists did, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe shaped heroic figures larger than
life, burning with mythic significance. The typical protagonists of the American Romance are
haunted, alienated individuals. Hawthorne’s Arthur Dimmesdale or Hester Prynne in The Scarlet
Letter, Melville’s Ahab in Moby-Dick, and the many isolated and obsessed characters of Poe’s tales
are lonely protagonists pitted against unknowable, dark fates that, in some mysterious way. One
reason for this fictional exploration into the hidden recesses of the soul is the absence of settled,
traditional community life in America. (https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/oal/lit4.htm)

Increasingly independent of the declining system of aristocratic patronage, they saw themselves as
free spirits expressing their own imaginative truths; several found admirers ready to heroworship
the artist as a genius or prophet. The restrained balance valued in 18th-century culture was
abandoned in favour of emotional intensity, often taken to extremes of rapture, nostalgia (for
childhood or the past), horror, melancholy, or sentimentality. Some—but not all—Romantic writers
cultivated the appeal of the exotic, the bizarre, or the macabre; almost all showed a new interest in
the irrational realms of dream and delirium or of folk superstition and legend. The creative
imagination occupied the centre of Romantic views of art, which replaced the 'mechanical' rules of
conventional form with an 'organic' principle of natural growth and free development.

Around 1820, the Romantic Movement, originating in Germany, quickly spread to England, France,
and beyond to reach America 20 years after. In addition to their concern with nature in celebrating
the untamed lands of the new world, Romantic ideas centered around (1) the spirituality of nature,
and (2) the inspiration of art.

In America as in Europe, a fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was
an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion
(Westward territorial expansion) and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. Moreover, the
solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured
the masterpieces of “the American Renaissance.”

Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative essayists.
America’s vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime. The Romantic spirit seemed
particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the
common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values.
Certainly the New England Transcendentalists — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
and their associates — were inspired to a new optimistic affirmation by the Romantic movement.

“Although challenged in the second half of the 19th century by the rise of realism and naturalism,
Romanticism has in some ways maintained a constant presence in Western literature, providing the
basis for several schools and movements from the pre-raphaelites and symbolists to expressionism
and surrealism.” (Baldick 225)

Works Cited
Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. USA : Oxford University
Press.1990

References and Further readings:

VanSpanckeren, Kathryn. An Outline of American Literature.

https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/oal/oaltoc.htm