Introduction to the Romantic Period Characteristics

2. Romanticism (literature), a movement
in the literature of virtually every
country of Europe, the United States,
and Latin America that lasted from
about 1750 to about 1870,
characterized by reliance on the
imagination and subjectivity of
approach, freedom of thought and
expression, 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.

3. 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 18th-
century Neoclassicism in particular. It
was also to some extent a reaction
against the Enlightenment and
against 18th-century rationalism.

4. Romanticism emphasized the
individual, the subjective, the
irrational, the imaginative, the
personal, the spontaneous, the
emotional, the visionary, and
the transcendental.

5. a general exaltation of
emotion over reason and
of the senses over
intellect;

6. a turning in upon the self and a heightened
examination of human personality and its
moods and mental potentialities;

7. a preoccupation with
the genius, the hero,
and the exceptional
figure in general, and a
focus on his passions
and inner struggles;

8. an emphasis upon
imagination as a
gateway to
transcendent
experience and spiritual
truth;

9. an obsessive interest in folk culture, national
and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval
era;
King Arthur

10. and a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious,
the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even
the satanic.

11. Rousseau
• Rousseau, Jean Jacques
• (1712-1778), French philosopher,
social and political theorist, musician,
botanist, and one of the most eloquent
writers of the Age of Enlightenment.

12. William Blake

13. Keats
• Although his life ended at age 25, only four years after the
1817 publication of his first book, English poet John Keats is
remembered for his melodious, rich verse, and is considered
one of the greatest English poets.

14. ey
• Influenced by the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th
century, English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley championed
liberal thought and rebelled against the restrictions of
English politics and religion. Shelley wrote enthusiastic,
impulsive poems noted for their lyricism and
romanticism. Critics consider Shelley one of the
greatest poets of the English language. He died in a
sailing accident in 1822 shortly before his 30th
birthday.

15. • William Wordsworth, considered one of the foremost
English romantic poets, composed flowing blank verse
on the spirituality of nature and the wonders of human
imagination. In "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood" (1807), Wordsworth
considers the Platonic notion that humans forget all
their knowledge at birth and spend the remainder of
their lives recollecting, rather than learning.
Wordsworth celebrates the child, who can enjoy an
ecstatic communion with nature, and hopes that in
adulthood people can eventually recover this ecstasy
by heeding intuition.

17. • English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote verse
highly representative of the Victorian era of 19th-
century England. A great fan of the changes brought
about by the early industrial revolution in England,
Tennyson celebrated the era's innovations and political
stability.

18. • English poet Robert Browning is considered one of the
most important poets of the Victorian era (1837–1901).
Part of the romantic movement in literature, his usually
optimistic poems praise action and condemn passivity.
In Browning's characteristic writing style, known as
dramatic monologue, he assumed the voice of historical
or imaginary characters, usually at some crucial
moment in their lives.

19. This famous excerpt, read by an actor, comes from English poet
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's collection Sonnets from the Portuguese
(1850). Browning based the sonnets on her love for her husband, the
poet Robert Browning, and presented the collection to him as a gift.
Elizabeth Browning wrote poems that reflected on humanitarian
themes, love, religion, and Italy.

20. Nineteenth-century writer Aleksandr Pushkin was one of
the first important literary figures in Russia. A versatile
writer, Pushkin wrote poetry, short stories, novels, and
plays. His most famous works include the drama Boris
Godunov (1825) and the epic poem Eugene Onegin (1823-
1831). Pushkin helped establish a strong Russian literary
tradition, and his work influenced many of the writers who
followed him.

21. Liberty leading the People Painted on 28 July 1830, to
commemorate the July Revolution that had just brought
Louis-Philippe to the French throne

22. • Early-19th-century German writer and poet Heinrich
Heine is best known for his beautiful, delicate, and at
times bitterly satiric poems. Heine's work reveals the
frustration that stemmed from the conflicts in his life,
including an unrequited love for his cousin, a conversion
from Judaism to Christianity because of anti-Semitism
in Germany, and his love for a country in which he
could no longer live. Heine moved to Paris in 1831 to
escape political oppression and literary suppression in
Germany.

23. Quality of Poetry
• emotion, introspection, passion, sublimity, beauty,
spontaneity, irregularity, picturesque

24. Subjects
• humankind generally, nature & the soul, spiritual
identity; a-political (or radical) human value, perception
and wholeness, often evoked through and deeply
connected to the natural world, inclusion of the elderly,
women, children, the rural and the unlettered

25. Setting
• Rural
• the city is seen as the locus of
corruption, greed and power

26. Allusion and History
• the mythic
• the mediaeval
• the gothic
• Irrational
• remote

27. La Ghirlandata
Rossetti, Dante
Gabriel

28. • Lyric
• ode (enthusiasm, union with
nature,inspiration, emotion, meditation)

29. Idea of
'Nature'
• 'Nature' refers firstly to the external world in its
beauty and power, and then as that nature is
an expression of the power of Being which
flows through and unites all things, including
humankind. This force is creative and moral,
and is embodied in humans in the Imagination
-- as opposed to the Reason in the neo-
classical view. Therefore poetry is marked by
emotion, beauty, inspiration, feeling, mystery.
Its sense of the moral is the fully experiencing,
passionate person, in harmony with the natural
world and the higher forces -- as opposed to
the civic order and right reason of the
neoclassical sense of the moral.