Romantic Period

Dr. George Boeree best describes the Romantic Movement in the following, “ Reason and the evidence of our senses were important no doubt but they mean nothing to us unless they touch our needs, our feelings, our emotions. Only then do they acquire meaning. This ‘meaning’ is what the Romantic Movement is all about.”

There were many changes that made this movement. The Romantics turned to the poet before the scientist to harbor their convictions. They found that Science was too narrow-minded, and held no room for emotion or feelings. In England, there was a resurgence into Shakespearean drama, and numerous techniques and styles such as Sturm and Drang, a style of writing in Germany, and in art the title sublime to describe the power of natural disasters that developed in the Romantic period. The perception that the Enlightenment was destroying the natural human soul and substituting it with the mechanical, artificial heart was becoming prevalent across Europe. Also another thought that was at the wake of romanticism were the words of the French revolution emphasizing liberty, freedom, and individuality as well as the need in England to escape what the industrial revolution was doing to the country.

There are many people and expressions either art, thought, or music that made the romantic period what is was. There are however key people who are involved in cementing certain expressions.

Many writers such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, and George Gordan, Lord Bryant, classified the Romantic period. One writer however Johann Wolfgang von Goethe of Germany really expressed this movement with "The Sorrows of Young Werther", which epitomized what Romanticism stood for. His character expressed feelings from the heart and gave way to a new trend of expressing emotions through individuality as opposed to collectivism. He was also known for the Sturm and Drang style that was popular in Germany. This style was the free spirited answer to the restraint of the classical period. Another popular writer was Mary Shelly. To go without saying her book Frankenstein which describes a man (Frankenstein) who lets science get out of control and creates a being that eventually hunts down and kills him was revolutionary at the time. This book was clearly is a revolt against the scientific happenings that caused the Romantic Movement.

The aspect of philosophy on Romanticism can be attributed to two great thinkers. G. W. F. Hegel, a German philosopher, rejected philosophy of the 18th century because he believed in "Idealism".