The Age of Romanticism
The Characteristics of
Romanticism

Romanticism was a
literary movement
in virtually every
country of Europe,
the United States,
and Latin America
that lasted from
about 1750 to
about 1870.

It was characterized by reliance on the
imagination and subjectivity of approach,
freedom of thought and expression, emotion
and an idealization of nature.

The term romantic
first appeared in
18th-century
English and
originally meant
"romancelike"—that
is, resembling the
fanciful character of
medieval romances.
Sturm und Drang
Rooted in the German movement
called Sturm und Drang -- ("Storm
and Stress")
 A Belief in the importance of allowing
emotions to have free reign outside of
the constraints of the rationalist
ideologies of the Enlightenment and
Age of Reason.

Johann Heinrich Füssli
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"I felt before I thought."

Goethe's novel The Sorrows of
Young Werther (1774) was
one of the great influential
documents of romanticism,
this work exalts sentiment,
even to the point of justifying
committing suicide because of
unrequited love.

The book set a tone and mood much
copied by the romantics in their
works and often in their personal
lives: a fashionable tendency to
frenzy, melancholy, world-weariness,
and even self-destruction.

As romantic
literature
developed,
imagination was
praised over
reason, emotions
over logic, and
intuition over
science—making
way for a vast
body of literature
of great sensibility
and passion.
The Great Romantic Themes

Libertarianism the desire to be
free of convention
and tyranny, and
the new emphasis
on the rights and
dignity of the
individual.

Lord Byron and Percy
Bysshe Shelley, who
most typify the
romantic poet (in their
personal lives as well
as in their work),
wrote resoundingly in
protest against social
and political wrongs
and in defense of the
struggles for liberty in
Italy and Greece.
Nature

Romantic poetry
was often
concerned with
nature and
natural
surroundings,
and delighted in
the unspoiled
scenery and in
the innocent life
of rural people.

This theme can be found in
"Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard" (1751) by Thomas
Gray, and in "Ode on
Melancholy" (1820) by John
Keats, or—in a different time and
place—in the works of American
writers: such as the tales of
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The curfew tolls the knell of
parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er
the lea,
The plowman homeward plods
his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness
and to me.
Now fades the glimm'ring
landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness
holds…
Ode on Melancholy – John Keats


But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu;
and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous
tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate
fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
The Lure of the Exotic

The Romantics studied
history and turned
back to the Middle
Ages for themes and
settings and chose
locales ranging from
the Hebrides to the
Asian setting of
Xanadu evoked by
Coleridge in his lyric
poem "Kubla Khan“
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
 It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of
ice !

The Supernatural

The trend toward
the irrational and
the supernatural
was an important
component of
English and
German romantic
literature.

Historical mindedness
and interest in the
supernatural led to a
rediscovery of a body
of older literature—
folktales and
ballads—collected by
Percy and by German
scholars Jacob and
Wilhelm Karl Grimm
(The Brothers
Grimm) and by the
Danish writer Hans
Christian Andersen.
The
Frog King
Gothic Literature

The preoccupation
with the supernatural
also gave way to the
writing of “Gothic”
horror stories such as
Frankenstein by Mary
Shelly and the writings
of the American author
Edgar Allan Poe.
Romantic Poetry
 To
the Romantics, poetry ranked
above all other literary forms
because they believed it was the
direct expression of one’s soul.
Percy Bysshe Shelley


The author of Prometheus
Unbound,
Thou speakest, but thy
words Are as the air; I feel
them not.
Oh, lift Thine eyes, that I
may read his written soul!
The Death of Percy Shelley
July 1822, less than a month before his 30th
birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm
while sailing back from Livorno to Lerici in his
schooner, Don Juan.
John Keats (1795-1821)


Keats's published his first volume of
works in 1817 to several harsh reviews.
Then, in 1818, Keats went to take care
of his brother, Tom, who had
tuberculosis. Tom died in December of
1818. Soon after, Keats contracted
tuberculosis himself.
Keats
left England
on the advice of his
doctor and traveled
to Rome.
 While there, Keats tried to
recover in the warm
Mediterranean climate, but
his physical condition
continued to deteriorate and
on February 23, 1821, Keats
died – he was 25 years old.
WHEN I HAVE FEARS
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high pilèd books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain ;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance ;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour !
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love ! - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
Keats’ Epitaph
This Grave
contains all that was Mortal
of a
YOUNG ENGLISH POET
Who,
on his Death Bed,
in the Bitterness of his Heart,
at the malicious Power of his Enemies
Desired
these Words to be engraven on his
Tomb Stone:
“Here lies One
Whose Name was writ in Water “
Feb 24th, 1821.
“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known”
Romanticism in Art

Romanticism can be
seen as a rejection of
the precepts of order,
calm, harmony,
balance, idealization,
and rationality that
typified Classicism in
general and late 18thcentury
Neoclassicism in
particular.
The characteristic attitudes of
Romanticism



appreciation of the
beauties of nature
emotion over reason and
of the senses over
intellect
a turning in upon the self
and a heightened
examination of human
personality and its
moods and mental
potentialities

a preoccupation
with the genius,
the hero, and the
exceptional figure
in general, and a
focus on his
passions and
inner struggles.

an emphasis upon
imagination as a
gateway to
transcendent
experience and
spiritual truth

interest in folk
culture,
national and
ethnic cultural
origins, and the
medieval era

and a predilection
for the exotic, the
remote, the
mysterious, the
weird, the occult,
the monstrous, the
diseased, and even
the satanic.
Eugène Delacroix
Liberty leading the People
The Death of Sardanapal
J. M. W. Turner - Snowstorm
William Blake
The Ancient of
Days
To see a World in
a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a
Wild Flower, Hold
Infinity in the palm
of your hand And
Eternity in an
hour.
Caspar David Friedrich
Wanderer in the Mists
1818
Ludwig von Beethoven