Romanticism Essay

2500 Words5 Pages

Realism’s Influence on Literature and American Music
The age of Realism brought together intellectuals such as the father of modern short stories, Henrik Ibsen, and famous musicians such as Scott Joplin. This exact movement communicated an abandonment from the influences of both the intellectual and romantic movements that came before it in America. Some of the most recognized works of American music and literature were produced outside of the period of Realism.
The changes in society and the social well-being of people underlie the primary purpose of the Romantic Movement. Romanticism originally was the reaction against the Enlightenment. According to the Scientific Journal Of Humanistic Studies, the Enlightenment’s purpose was “to reform society using reason, challenging ideas are grounded in tradition and faith, and advance knowledge through the scientific method. “It promoted scientific thought, skepticism, and intellectual interchange” (Bodrogean). With the historical and cultural context of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Romanticism in music took two distinctive paths. “One path in particular was taken in the path to find sources in the French Revolution of 1789 through 1793 and other revolutionary movements such as the July Revolution of 1830” (Fluck).Realism is found everywhere in literature and has enhanced the experiences of our lives, especially in the humanities. The ultimate influential arguments for realism is that it represents the life that people live. In response to the Romantic Era, the Realism Movement sought to depict real-life situations and people that not only affected literature, but also the American music written in the early eighteenth century through the twenty-first century.
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...enty-first century. “The term “humanities” is difficult to define in part because it is used in at least two different ways: one to denote specific branches of learning or academic disciplines that explore human experience and values both past and present; and two to describe ways of thinking about the human condition” (Collins). Both honorable novelists and musicians previously mentioned such as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, Scott Joplin, and Francis Scott Key paved the way for young twenty-first century authors and musicians to be able to make history and inspire young artists for centuries and generations to come. The Realism Movement paved the way for novelists, artists and composers to express themselves. This movement allowed them to convey messages, and was ultimate influential argument of what realism is and that it truly represents the life that people live.

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