The Romantic Age
Introppico Fedora
Lupattelli Ilaria
Mecarelli Vanni
Minciarelli Francesca
Montesi Gaia
Pianigiani Elena
literature
Movement in
art
to emphasize feelings
music
ROMANTICISM
Reaction against the conviction that
human actions are guided by
economics, sociology and physics
New sensibility
against the faith in reason that
characterised the previous age
John Constable
SOME CONSIDERATIONS
ABOUT ROMANTICISM…
It begins in the 1770s and
continues into the second
half of 19th century
England and Germany: the
strongholds of the
Romantic movement
It affects all the arts
It changes the human way
of perceiving the world
«age of revolution»
• the French revolution
• the American revolution
• effects of Industrial
revolution
1776: American Declaration of Independence
Equality and Freedom
American identity
Puritanism
French revolution (1789-1791)
influenced
Human progress
Britain
France
Napoleon’s
ascent
Jacobinism
1793: Napoleonic Wars
1815: Waterloo
THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
In the middle of
18th century
Great increase in population  more goods
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
PROS
•new sources
•new inventions
•transports improvements
•machines vs workers
Connected to Agrarian Revolution
(technological inventions)
CONS
•from the countryside to «mushrooms
towns»
•inhuman living and working conditions
•rise of unemployment
Luddites riots (1811)
THE AIMS OF THE ROMANTICS
Contrasts with Neoclassicism
Romanticism
revalues
Middle Ages
+
ancient
classics
+
Baroque
Individualism
VS
universalism
Imagination
VS
Reason
Romantic hero
VS
society
It is presented
as a work of art
A living being to be
described as it is
made by a divine
immagination
The new concept of
NATURE
Attention to
describing natural
phenomena
in Romantic
landscape painting
and in Romantic
nature poetry.
Romantic nature poetry is a
poetry of meditation.
It is viewed as a system of
mechanical laws
It is the supreme
faculty of the mind
It is connected with
symbolism and nature
IMAGINATION
It is uncorrupted in
children and closer
to God
It is the equivalent of the
creative power of nature
and God
It is in contrast with
reason
It is a rebellion from
mechanisation and a
rationalisation of society
Romantic
reconciliation with
opposites
SYMBOLISM
Symbols:
•Expression of nature’s emblematic language
•Superior to one- to- one communication of allegory
•In language symbols express the inexpressible
The Myth is a symbolic
narrative
OTHER CONCEPTS:
Emotion, Lyric Poetry, and the Self
Greater attention
to the emotions
applied to
creation of poetry
The "poetic speaker"
becomes the direct
person of the poet
Art is important to
know the world
within
Development of the self
Wordsworth's definition of good poetry as
"the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"
The artist as a
hero
My heart leaps up
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Freedom in
composition
First-person liric poetry
Boldness VS restraint
ROMANTIC LITERATURE
Emotions
The artist is an
inspired creator and
an independent
genius
Suggestiveness to
neoclassical clarity
Dominated
by poetry
and
Shelley is intense
novel
Scott  Ivanhoe
Byron is sardonic
Keats is sentimental
Elevated forces of
nature
Nature as a
protagonist
(landscape)
Pictoresque
and sublime
Wonder for
the creation
No heroic
figures
Man dwarfed in
comparison with
Nature
Intensity of feeling
ROMANTIC ART
Neoclassic art
Impressionist movement
John Constable
Caspar David Friedrich
Francisco Goya
Francesco Hayez
William Turner
He interprets things through
his emotions
ROMANTIC ARTIST IN SOCIETY
He is politically and socially
committed a period of
revolutions: to animate
souls against oppression
and injustice
He distances
himself from
the public
The contrast between
artist and middle-class
«Philistine»
PHILOSOPHY
Kant
rejects
The human
mind is
structured in a
way that affects
experiences
Hegel
Ideas are the blend of
theories that come
before and any idea is
a hypothesis
Locke’s ideas
Innate knowledge
Liberating man
from the tyranny
of knowledge
Dialectic: no definited
knowledge from
scientific experiments
Hypothesis
+
antithesis
Synthesis
• Artists for their symbols
turned to:
• Domestic life
• Folk legends and older
art forms
• Children
Realistic techniques
(«local color»)
EVERYDAY
It is submitted to
imaginative suggestions
(ideal of semplicity or
innocence)
and
Paradoxical combination:
• Lyrical Ballads
• Frankenstein
It is opposed to the conception
of «objective» reason
EXOTIC
ROMANTICISM TODAY
1990s – 2000s
Romantic Age
Advancement of industry and technology
Spawn desire for a
more simple time
The mass can
partake the culture
New form of poetry, new
musical instruments and
elevated lifestyle
Bibliography
History:
• http://academic.brooblyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html
• http://www.indepthinfo.com/history/romanticism.html
• Lit&Lab – From the Early Romantics to the Present Age
Images:
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Caspar David Friedrich – “Frau vor untergehender Sonne”
Caspar David Friedrich – “Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer”
Francesco Hayez – “Il bacio”
John Constable – “Deadham Vale”
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson – “Apothéose des héros
français morts pour la patrie pendant la guerre de la liberté”
• Eugène Delacroix – “La liberté guidant le peuple”
• Eugène Delacroix – “Autoportrait”
• Other images from the Net