ROMANTIC THEORY

Group 6
What is Romanticism?
 What is Romanticism?

X
Romanticism has nothing to do with love.
 What is Romanticism?
Romantic Literary Theory Romanticism 1820-1865 is a European
artistic and intellectual movement of the early 19th century, characterized
by an emphasis on individual freedom from social conventions or
political restraints, on human imagination (through symbols), and on
nature in a typically idealized form of writing. Romantic literature
rebelled against the formalism of 18th century reason. Many Romantic
writers had an interest in the culture of the Middle Ages, an age noted for
its faith, which stood in contrast to the age of the Enlightenment and pure
logic.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH explained his idea on
romanticism in his preface to the second edition of the
Lyric Ballads that poetry should:

1. Have a subject matter that is ordinary commonplace

2. Use simple language, even aspiring to the language of
prose
3. Make use of imagination
4. Convey a primal (simple, uncomplicated) feeling
5. Present similitude is dissimulated (similarities in
difference.
Core Principle of Romanticism:

1.Imagination
 Core Principles: Imagination

The imagination in the center of all things Romantic

 Core Principles: Imagination

In its broadest sense, imagination is a factor in how we perceive realty as

our minds attempts to process and to understand the sensory data of the
world around us.
 Core Principles: Imagination

As the mind receives stimuli in the form of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound,
imagination is a major part of the mental process that gives those stimuli meaning.
Core Principles: Imagination
For the Romantics, imagination was
also the primary vehicle for creation
of art.

Through imagination, the Romantic

writer could wield creative energy
that was godlike in its power.
 Core Principles: Imagination

For the Romantics, the purpose of literature was not to describe the world
as it was, but rather as how it could be.
Core Principle of Romanticism:

1.Imagination
2.Nature
Core Principles: Nature
For the Romatics, nature was a
product of imagination, distinct
from, but related to, the entities
that existed In the physical world.

Because it was the product of the

imagination, nature meant
different things to different
Romantics artists.
Core Principles: Nature
Nature could be
• A subject or an image
• A healing power
• The dwelling place for the
divine
• A refuge from the harshness
of civilization and the
industrialized world
 Core Principles: Nature

In the 17th and 18th centuries, nature was increasingly seen as something
to be bent to man’s will.
Core Principles: Nature

For the Romantics, however,

nature was a force that was wild
and untamable.
Core Principle of Romanticism:

1.Imagination
2.Nature
3.Individual
Core Principles: Individual

In its emphasis on the

imagination,
Romanticism place great
importance on intuition, instinct,
and emotion.
Core Principles: Individual

It is when we are alone that we

can think most deeply and be
most sensitive to the world
around us.
 Core Principles: Individual

In its emphasis on solitude, Romantic art is deeply meditative.

Core Principles: Individual

A major moment in literary history came

in 1798 when William Wordsworth
described poetry as “the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings…
Recollected in tranquility
Core Principles: Individual

Romantic poetry:

A synthesis of exuberant activity

and quite meditation.
Core Principles: Individual

Memory is at the center of

this process of individual
experience and reflection

Since our perception of the

world is limited and our
memory of the past is
imperfect, imagination is the
tool by which we fill in the
gaps.
Core Principles: Individual

This emphasis on individual

imagination and experience
reversed the ancient idea that
art is a mirror to the world.

For the Romantics, art does

not reflect the world outside,
it creates a world within.
Core Principles: Individual

Consequently, Romantic
poetry is often lyric poetry,
and we can assume that
speaker in a given poem is
either the poet himself or
someone who represents him.
Core Principles: Individual
Romanticism rejected the status quo
and saw the modern world’s emphasis
on rules and order to be personally,
politically, and artistically limiting.

Romantic art is an art of defiance that

emphasizes boldness, energy,
eccentricity, and experimentation.
Core Principles: Individual

“I must create a system, or else be enslaved by another

man’s”

--William Blake, Jerusalem(1803)

Core Principles: Individual

In this way, the Romantic artist

positions himself as heroic outsider,
operating independently from the
society of which he is part
Core Principles: Individual

Because they viewed themselves as

heroic outsiders, Romantic artists
identified with those on the margins of
society, and their art often reacted to
the social injustice and political
oppression of their time.
Core Principles: Individual

Inspired by the revolutions in America

and France, romantic artist were
idealist who saw their work as a
vehicle democratic change.
Thankyou!