romanticism report in English and American Literature romanticism nature and eternity

3.  Contrary
to what you
may think, the term
Romanticism is not
just about romantic
love (although love is
sometimes the
subject of romantic
art).

4. Romanticism
is
characterized by the 5 “I”s

5.  Imagination
was emphasized over
“reason.”
 This was a backlash against the
rationalism characterized by the
Neoclassical period or “Age of Reason.”
 Imagination was considered necessary for
creating all art.

6. As the poet Wordsworth
would suggest, humans not
only perceive and
experience the world
around them; they also, in
part, create it. The
imagination unites reason
and feeling, enabling
humans to reconcile
differences and opposites—
this reconciliation is a
central ideal for Romantics.
Finally, the imagination
enables humans to “read “
nature as a system of
symbols.


7.  Romantics
placed value on
“intuition,” or feeling and
instincts, over reason.
 Emotions were important in
Romantic art.
 British Romantic William
Wordsworth described
poetry as “the spontaneous
overflow of powerful
feelings.”

8.  Idealism
is the concept that
we can make the world a
better place.
 Immanuel
Kant, a German
philosopher, held that the
mind forces the world we
perceive to take the shape of
space-and-time.

9.  The
Romantic artist,
musician, or writer, is an
“inspired creator” rather
than a “technical master.”
 What this means is “going
with the moment” or being
spontaneous, rather than
“getting it precise.”

10.  Romantics
celebrated the
individual.
 During this time period,
Women’s Rights and
Abolitionism were taking
root as major movements.
 Walt Whitman, a later
Romantic writer, would
write a poem entitled
“Song of Myself”: it begins,
“I celebrate myself…”

11. 


Embracing the uncivilized, the
wild, the pre-civilized.
Rousseau: “Man is born free
and everywhere he is in
chains.” In other words,
civilization is in part the cause
of our corruption.
The “noble savage,” and James
Fennimore Cooper’s
Leatherstocking novels, I.e. The
Last of the Mohicans.

12. The
first viewed
nature as
peaceful, calm,
nurturing, a
source for
spiritual renewal.

16. •The
beautiful
and
•The sublime

18.  Nature
often presented as a work of art
from the divine imagination
 Nature as a healing power
 Nature as a refuge from civilization
 Nature viewed as “organic,” (alive) rather
than “mechanical” or “rationalist”
 Nature viewed as a source
of refreshment and
meditation

19.  Valued
as the human means
for imitating nature in art
 Could simultaneously
suggest many things in a
creative way
 Based on a desire to
“express the inexpressible”
through the resources of
language

20. 
As the Romantic writers
show us, our heroes were
not always cowboys:



1. The hero as artist
2. The hero striving beyond
the moral restrictions of
society
3. The hero who reappears
from the ancient classics

21.  Romantic
writers embraced
everyday realism (poetry of
Wordsworth)
 Also sought the folk legends
of the past
 Promoted exotic ideas
suggested by technology and
the imagination (a beautiful
soul in an ugly body, as in
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
or Victor Hugo’s The
Hunchback of Notre Dame).

22. 
The Romantics were
often ambivalent toward
the “outside” world. On
the one hand, they were
socially and politically
passionate—involved in
worthy causes and social
issues. On the other
hand, they isolated
themselves from the
public.

23.  Today
a number of literary theorist have called
into two major romantic perceptions:
1. That the literary text is a separate,
individuated, living organism.
2. That the artist is fiercely independent genius
who creates original works of art