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The Relevance of Romanticism
Romanticism, research paper
Historical context american romanticism
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The nineteenth century brought upon a new era which introduced many things, one of which is Romanticism. This can be defined as a cultural movement in history that was brought upon by one’s creativity, and defiance of normal set limitations. Romanticism in the nineteenth century is marked by deep subjectivity. Some Romantic artists may be viewed confident through individuality. Likewise, Romanticism is celebrated by freedom and the exercise of imagination and can also be expressed though emotion.
Ultimately, the vital key to Romanticism is a feeling intense experience, and is characterized by subjectivism, individuality, emotion, and imagination. Artwork was one form that helped express creativity. A few artists from the nineteenth century,
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His watercolor Interior of Tintern Abbey, finished in 1974, shows his imagination into the language of poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote of his own recollection of sensations brought on by visiting the Wye River and its ruins of a medieval monastery. William’s own feeling was that nature allows one to “see into the life of things” (Pg. 7). Upon reading William’s poetry Turner decided to search the Wye Valley in order to locate remnants of picturesque subjects to paint from that previous medieval time. Through J. Turner’s own intense experience with subjectivism he was able to capture the transient beauty of the medieval past and paint a vivid piece of artwork that looked into his own …show more content…
She escaped into Europe and used this personal intense experience of freedom to create a stunning emotional piece of artwork.
Imagination was also introduced into the Romantic era by several artists, one of the most memorable happens to be Edward Hicks. He was a Quaker minister, and a popular sign painter that portrayed immense feeling through his imagination. He believed in mysticism and that innocence and peace could be brought to the world, which in turn, would create a Utopian society.
Hicks produced a painting based upon that imaginative thinking which he called The Peaceable Kingdom. He placed a landscape onto canvas, then painted images of children hugging and playing around huge wild animals. These animals signified “the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid… and a little child shall lead them” which indicates that an untamed animal could be tamed through peace amongst all (Pg. 24). Romanticism was seen in Hicks artwork by the introduction of imagination which portrayed his intense feeling that the world could
In short, it can be seen that while there are some basic similarities between Enlightenment and Romantic thinking -- because of the fact that they do explore nature-- their convergence, ideologically, ends there. In fact, it seems that nature’s ability to be so subjective has led to the two ideologies being exact opposites in almost every regard. The Enlightenment focuses on human’s achievement in regard to nature, while Romanticism focuses on the insignificance of humans in comparison to the immensity of nature. It seems that, in the end, the movements of Enlightenment and Romanticism were just what the description entailed – moving. It can then be wholly concluded that the two movements were far more different than alike based on their ideologies and creations.
"Romanticism -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia." Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Web. 3 Dec. 2010. .
To start with, Romanticism was the first writing movement of the nineteenth century. It originated at the close of the eighteenth century in Europe, but was popular from the 1800s to 1850s. This movement was a revolt against the political and social standards of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction to the reasoning of nature through science. Romanticism’s characteristics came from philosophical sources and, because it is a reaction against reasoning, it focuses on intuition, nature, and human emotions. The philosophical background of this movement came from an author named Jean-Jacques Rousseau who emphasized the individual and the power of inspiration. Romanticism later then broke off into another two movements called Parnassian and Realism.
The Romanticism period started in 1789 and lasted till 1830. This time period was a major international movement, shaping modern views of art, literature, music, and other aspects in life. Romanticism was the “reaction against artistic styles of classical antiquity, which was neoclassicism.” Neoclassicists focused on the power of reasoning to discover the truth while Romantics focused on the hope to transform the world through the power of imagination. They had a deep love for nature (Furst 302). The aspects of romanticism are important; they are the beliefs of this period. The first aspect includes nature, which allows them to be free from the artificial aspects of civilization; they were with man’s true setting. Nature was there to reveal and heal individuals. An example of the love for nature in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry ‘Frost at Midnight’ is he is describing how happy he is that his baby will be able to see nature instead of living in the city like he did, “But thou, my babe! shalt wander like ...
To understand how Romanticism changed the way society thought, you must first understand the meanings and reason behind the movement. The Romantic Movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was described as a movement in the history of culture, an aesthetic style, and an attitude of mind. (Fiero) Romanticism provided expression of their thoughts and ideas toward their own societies, which was in effect predominantly in Europe and in the United States. The movement was a reaction to the Enlightenment which provided strict ideology and rationalism. The Church had much to do with the Enlightenment seeing as if religion and the importance of God were incorporated into most aspects of their culture. Thus, Romanticism was a response to the Enlightenment Movement and their religious ideology.
Despite its name, the Romantic literary period has little to nothing to do with love and romance that often comes with love; instead it focuses on the expression of feelings and imagination. Romanticism originally started in Europe, first seen in Germany in the eighteenth century, and began influencing American writers in the 1800s. The movement lasts for sixty years and is a rejection of a rationalist period of logic and reason. Gary Arpin, author of multiple selections in Elements of Literature: Fifth Course, Literature of The United States, presents the idea that, “To the Romantic sensibility, the imagination, spontaneity, individual feelings and wild nature were of greater value than reason, logic, planning and cultivation” (143). The Romantic author rejects logic and writes wild, spontaneous stories and poems inspired by myths, folk tales, and even the supernatural. Not only do the Romantics reject logic and reasoning, they praise innocence, youthfulness and creativity as well as the beauty and refuge that they so often find in nature.
Romantic painting is characterized by emotionalism and fascination with the exotic. It reached its peak about 1830 in France, England and Germany. Some principles of Romanticism are that the emphasis is on feelings, especially on personal feelings rather than the general or community feelings.... ... middle of paper ...
Romantic: of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealised, sentimental, or fantastic view of reality… concerned more with feeling and emotion than with form and aesthetic qualities.
Romanticism was a reaction to the Enlightenment as a cultural movement, an aesthetic style, and an attitude of mind (210). Culturally, Romanticism freed people from the limitations and rules of the Enlightenment. The music of the Enlightenment was orderly and restrained, while the music of the Romantic period was emotional. As an aesthetic style, Romanticism was very imaginative while the art of the Enlightenment was realistic and ornate. The Romanticism as an attitude of mind was characterized by transcendental idealism, where experience was obtained through the gathering and processing of information. The idealism of the Enlightenment defined experience as something that was just gathered.
The Romantic period was an expressive and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century and peaked in the 1800s-1850s. This movement was defined and given depth by an expulsion of all ideals set by the society of the particular time, in the sense that the Romantics sought something deeper, something greater than the simplistic and structured world that they lived in. They drew their inspiration from that around them. Their surroundings, especially nature and the very fabric of their minds, their imagination. This expulsion of the complexity of the simple human life their world had organised and maintained resulted in a unique revolution in history. Eradication of materialism, organisation and society and
Baudelaire had a strong influence on Romanticism. Romanticism is a literary and art movement that occurred during the late 18th century that emphasized imagination, emotion, and love of nature. Baudelaire really liked Romanticism although he found himself “incapable of being moved by vegetation.” During the time he wrote “salon de 1846”, Baudelaire alleged that the ideal was represented by Romanticism. In “Salon de 1846” he wrote, "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling" (Galitz). Baudelaire felt that the beauty in Romanticism was that artists and writers were looking inward to represent things in their own personal way while using nature as an inspiration for that self-exploration. In his book, Baudelaire: Selected Writing on Art and Artist, Baudelaire wrote, "Romanticism lies neither in the subjects an artist chooses nor in his exact copying of truth, but in the way he feels" (Baudelaire 52). Through this states how he views Romanticism and what attracts him to the movement. Throughout his life and for many years to come, Baudelaire had a significant inf...
The Romantic movement of the nineteenth century in Europe involved those who wished to express their disapproval of industrialism. Romantics focus on individualism as well as images and ideas created by the imagination. Romantics are very centered around a certain beauty and power of nature as opposed to material objects. Romantics stay away from the more realistic part of life, this is greatly expressed in Romantic literature and art. Specifically, in Arthur Rimbaud’s “Ophelia” it is evident to see the fascination with nature as well as the individual. He states, “On the calm black wave where the stars sleep/ Floats white Ophelia like a great lily,/ Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils . . .”(891). Here there is evidence of a Romantic’s
Roughly from 1815 to 1910, this period of time is called the romantic period. At this period, all arts are transforming from classic arts by having greater emphasis on the qualities of remoteness and strangeness in essence. The influence of romanticism in music particularly, has shown that romantic composers value the freedom of expression, movement, passion, and endless pursuit of the unattainable fantasy and imagination. The composers of the romantic period are in search of new subject matters, more emotional and are more expressive of their feelings as they are not bounded by structural rules in classical music where order, equilibrium, control and perfection are deemed important (Dorak, 2000).
Romantic art portrays emotional, painted, or shown in a bold and dramatic manner, and there is often a stress on the past. Romantic artists often use sad themes and dramatic tragedies. Paintings by famous Romantic artists such as Gericault and Delacroix are filled with energetic brushstrokes, rich colors, and emotive subject matters. While the German landscape painter Casper David Friedrich created images of lost loneliness, and at the same time in Spain, Francisco Goya conveyed the horrors of war in his works. This shows the variety of different art works of this time period. Some of these artists were fascinated in nature, people can definitely see this if they are shown through any Romanticism museum, also the importance of drama and emotion. At this time artists made their art work portray more then what the eye sees, the artists added more symbolism to the art work then in the Renaissance. The Pre-Raphaelite movement succeeded Romanticism, and Impressionism is firmly rooted in the Romantic tradition. Other famous Romantic artists include George Stubbs, William Blake, John Margin, John Constable, JMW Turner, and Sir Thomas Lawrence. And Although Romanticism was very popular for the paintings, it was also popular for its music, and poetry, and even architecture. This shows that this period advanced not only in variety of artwork but also a variety of all sorts of effects.
Romantics believed in freedom and spontaneous creativity rather than order and imitation, they believed people should think for themselves instead of being bound to the fixed set of beliefs of the Enlightenment. Romanticism and Love Of all the emotions celebrated by the Romantics, the most popular was love. However, Romanticism should not be confused with romantic love in the sense of candle lit dinners and receiving love notes, flowers and boxes of candy. Instead, it was about a love for nature and beauty, and a sense of all human beings having a connection, empathy was heightened for others in which they brought on feeling the pains of other people in the world. To the Romantics love, which invokes compassion, was a natural God-given right.