Romanticism

ROMANTICISM INFLUENCE OF CHATEAUBRIAND AND MADAME DE STAEL From the literary, no less from the political, point of view the chief interest of the time belongs to Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, whose writings did much to inaugerate the new movement which was to alter the character of French literature. Chateaubriand had visited America and seen something of savage life in the wilderness, which afterward formed the basis of picturesque and ideal descriptions. He was also a champion of the restoration of the Catholic religion, whose rites and churches had been wantonly assailed and overthrown in the French Revolution, yet had been reinstated in their former place under Napoleon. Chateaubriand regarded Christianity as "the most poetical of all religions, the most attractive, the most fertile in literary, artistic and social results." To prove his thesis and impress it on the minds and hearts of his countrymen he wrote his two splendid works, the Genius of Christianity and The Martyrs, which, by their powerful appeal to history and their imaginative beauty, had enormous influence on succeeding literary development. Madame de Stael, exiled by Napoleon, wandered to Germany and there became acquainted with Goethe and Schiller and their surroundings. Her description of this country in De l'Allemagne opened up to the rising generation in France treasures of literature and philosophy till then entirely unknown. Her romances, Delphine and Corinne, also led the imagination in new fields. Different as were the spirit, aim and style of these two writers, they combined in their enthusiasm in inaugurating what has become known as Romanticism. THE RISE OF ROMANTICISM Chateaubriand revived a longing for the simple faith of the medieval church and the beauties of chivalry. This was fostered by the writings of Sir Walter Scott, which were eagerly welcomed in France. A periodical called La Muse Français enlisted the services of ardent royalists; among them were Victor Hugo and De Vigny. Then war was declared against classicism in the drama, which was supported chiefly by writers of the Liberal party. The Romantics formed a club called the Cénacle, in which Hugo was the chief poet and Sainte-Beuve the chief critic. Political divisions became less prominent, and literary sympathies alone formed the bond of the union. The movement was violently opposed, and members of the Academy petitioned the king to forbid the representation of any Romantic piece at the Théâtre Français. On the other hand the more violent members of the club declared its object to be the burning of everything which had been adored, and the adoring of everything which had been burnt. The rejected the established canons of the classic drama--the unities, the arbitrary selection of subjects, the restrictions on the use of words, the requirements of periphrasis instead of plain speech, the cultivation of artificial beauty. These enthusiasts wished to hear in the drama, as the language of passion and emotion, the words in common use. The Romantics were sometimes designated as the flamboyant, referring to the gay and picturesque attire affected by some of their most enthusiastic adherents, as well as their literary style. The conservative Classicists were called grisâtre, or graybeard, which might also denote the gray and monotonous color of their poetry. After several preliminary skirmishes the struggle culminated at the representation of Victor Hugo's Hernani in February, 1830. Both parties assembled in force, one prepared to applaud, the other to hiss. Cries arose as the play proceeded, and even blows were struck. But the Romantic play was kept on the stage for two months, and the fierceness of the fight gradually subsided. The Romantics had won the day, though they had by no means suppressed the opposition. It lasted throughout the reign of Louis Philippe. The younger men of letters were all Romantics. WHAT IS ROMANTICISM' Romanticism has been defined in various ways, both by its advocates and by its opponents, and, indeed, by the historians who sought to be impartial. It was plainly a revolt against the enforcement of the rules which had been framed in the golden age of French literature as representing the best practice of the best writers. But these rules had been interpreted in a narrow spirit and enforced in an arbitrary manner by succeeding generations of critics. Scant allowance was made for the necessary growth of language, and for the introduction of new ideas and forms of thought. The classic literature belonged to the court and was modeled by strict rules of etiquette, which were out of harmony with the wider view of life and nature struggling for expression. Romanticism gave liberty to the author to express his thought in such terms as seemed to him most appropriate, without regard to what his predecessors had said. It refused to be trammeled by the notions of the French lawgiver Boileau, of the seventeenth century, or by the principles of the philosopher Aristotle, who wrote three centuries before Christ. It vindicated the rights of the modern world, and of each individual in that world, to utter and write his message to his fellow-men. It was individualistic. Yet, in actual practice it did not depart so widely from the standards already established, as either its opponents feared or its advocates claimed the right to do. Victor Hugo wrote his Hernani in rhymed Alexandrines, and observed many other conventionalities of the drama. The conservatives had been trained to criticise minute variations from the rules, and they doubted whereto those vaunted reforms would grow. The Romantics had themselves been trained in the same school and, as a matter of course, retained much of the old discipline. They knew that this was necessary if they were to be heard and understood by the people. Their changes were limited to lessening the restraint and relaxing the bonds of the old rules. They did not destroy and burn as they had threatened. The new liberty was found to be moderate, pleasing to the imagination and satisfactory to the calm judgment. If at times proper bounds were overstepped, criticism, rational and not arbitrary, could intervene to correct the error. RESULTS OF ROMANTICISM Although the battle of the Romanticists and Classicists was fought on the field of the drama, its principal results are not found there. The dramatic changes have not been of the greatest value or most permanent character. What is chiefly seen in the theatre is the prevalence of tragi-comedy, which the French call drame, a modified mixture of the old divisions of the art. It admits a greater variety of personages on the stage, and rejects the stock characters of the old style. It even allows that disjointed action, which has always been characteristic of the English stage, but was positively prohibited by the canons of the French, and even of the Greek theatre. After Victor Hugo's early battles for greater freedom had been fought to a successful conclusion, Alexandre Dumas came forward with a still more melodramatic style of the drame, and his plays also served as rallying points for the Romantics in their long contest. The chief of these were Henry III and Antony, in which new elements of strife were interjected, especially with regard to morality. La Tour de Nesle was also a fruitful source of discussion, the question of authorship being involved. Alexandre Soumet and Casimir Delavigne adhered more closely to the old models and won support from the Classicists. Soumet's dramas were Norma and Une Fête de Neron, while Delavigne presented Marino Faliero and Louis XI. Still later, Ponsard was leader in a kind of classical reaction with his Lucrèce, Charlotte Corday and other historical plays. The most prominent and fertile producer of comic plays was Eugène Scribe, who poured out shoals of vaudevilles and high comedies which had immense popularity. A new variety of comedy was introduced under the name of Proverbs, slight dramatic sketches in which the dialogue is of more importance than the action. In this class the poet Alfred de Musset specially distinguished himself. The titles of his pieces are self-explanatory, as Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée--A door must be open or shut; On ne badine pas avec L'amour--There's no trifling with love. http://www.theatrehistory.com/french/romanticism001.html Romanticism Summary Romanticism, unlike the other "isms", isn't directly political. It is more intellectual. The term itself was coined in the 1840s, in England, but the movement had been around since the late 18th century, primarily in Literature and Arts. In England, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Byron typified Romanticism. In France, the movement was led by men like Victor Hugo, who wrote the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Although it knew no national boundaries, Romanticism was especially prevalent in Germany, spearheaded by artists like Goethe and thinkers such as Hegel. [pic][pic][pic] The basic idea in Romanticism is that reason cannot explain everything. In reaction to the cult of rationality that was the Enlightenment, Romantics searched for deeper, often subconscious appeals. This led the Romantics to view things with a different spin than the Enlightenment thinkers. For example, the Enlightenment thinkers condemned the Middle Ages as "Dark Ages", a period of ignorance and irrationality. The Romantics, on the other hand, idealized the Middle Ages as a time of spiritual depth and adventure. Looking wistfully back to the Middle Ages, the Romantic influence led to a Gothic Revival in architecture in the 1830s. Gothic novels increased in popularity, and in art, paintings of various historical periods and exotic places came into vogue. It would be impossible to cover all of the Romantics in such a short space (and a disservice to them to attempt it), but representative examples can be given. Mary Shelley (the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, published Frankenstein in 1818. Few would argue that it is the best work of the British Romantics, but it is indicative. In this story, a scientist is able to master life, animating an artificially constructed person. But this "miracle of science," far from a simple story of man mastering nature through reason, ends up having monstrous results. In Germany art, Friedrich Schiller produced plays known for their sense of a German "Volk", or national spirit. Karl Friedrich Schinckel led the Gothic Revival movement, beginning his first plans for Gothic structures as early as the 1820s. German romantic philosophy was dominated by W.G.F. Hegel. He construed the development of the state as part of a historical process, or "teleology". He is particularly famous for outlining a concept of the dialectic: the mind makes progress by creating opposites, which are then combined in a synthesis. Hegel tied his philosophy into nationalism by arguing for a German national dialectic that would result in synthesis into a state. Hegel's work increased the emphasis people put on historical studies, and German history writing boomed. Partially as a result of Hegel's influence, the idea developed that Germany's role was to act as a counterbalance to France. Seeing themselves as such, Germans began to feel that liberalism was not appropriate in Germany. The French had their Romantics too, though not in the same profusion as Germany. For instance, Romantic painting is always associated with Eugene Delacroix, who prized the emotional impact of color over the representational accuracy of line and careful design. Delacroix painted historical scenes, such as "liberty Leading the People" (1830) which glorified the beautiful spectacle of revolution, perhaps construing it as part of the French national character. After 1848, Romanticism fell into decline. Commentary Romanticism can be construed as an opposite to "classicism," drawing on Rousseau's notion of the goodness of the natural. Romanticism holds that pure logic is insufficient to answer all questions. Despite a founding French influence, Romanticism was most widespread in Germany and England, largely as a reaction to the French Enlightenment. It also was a response to French cultural domination, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. The Romanticist emphasis on individualism and self-expression deeply impacted American thinking, especially the transcendentalism of Emerson. [pic][pic][pic] Instead of labeling, classifying, listing, tallying and condemning, the Romantics were relativist. That is, they looked less for ultimate, absolute truth than did Enlightenment thinkers. Romantics tended to think that everything had its own value, an "inner genius". Even in morality, the Romantics began to question the notion that there even was such a thing as absolute good and evil. Instead, each society was seen to create its own standards of morality. Romanticism also fueled many "isms" with the basic idea that "genius" had the power to change the world. German Romanticism, with its idea of a Volksgeist unique to each nation (derived from Herder's writings), gave an intellectual basis to nationalism. The movement of Romanticism encompasses several contradictory aspects: several ideas are grouped into the movement, and they do not always fit together. For instance, some Romantics utilized the ideology to argue for the overthrow of old institutions, while others used it to uphold historical institutions, claiming that tradition revealed the "inner genius" of a people. Basically, as long as romantic intellectual passion, not rationalism and strict reason, were the basic underpinning of an idea, than it can be classified as "Romantic." Interestingly, because of its geographical distribution, some historians argue that Romanticism was the secular continuation of the Protestant Reformation. Romanticism was most prominent in highly Protestant countries like Germany, England, and the United States. France, which had a significant Protestant movement but which remained Catholic-dominated, had something less of a Romantic movement. Other solidly Catholic countries were even less impacted by Romanticism. http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/1848/section5.rhtml French Revolution lasted from 1789-1799. On the other hand romanticism started in 1798 with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who were the first important English Romantic poets.So romantic poets must be influced by the French revolution. Whenever in history , human right is suppressed for long time, revolution started. The French king Louis XVI and the aristocrat class spent their life on pomp and lavishness. There was a gulf of difference between the court life and the life of common people. The common people did not get enough to meet their basic needs whereas the upper-class people led a life of luxury. To equalize this difference the people got together and revolted against the king and beheaded him. The slogan of the French revolution was “Equality, liberty, fraternity”. The spirit of the French revolution spread all over Europe , particularly in England. The theme of revolution, human existence on earth, liberty of human mind - all these aspects influenced the romantic poets like Shelley, Wordsworth very much. Literature as a Mirror of Society The literature of a country is affected and influenced by how the people of that country live. This paper will prove that The French Revolution greatly influenced 19th Century French Romanticism. First, the cultural values of the revolution will be identified. Then, the different aspects of Romanticism will be presented. The cultural values of The French Revolution and Romanticism will then be linked. Finally, literary examples will be shown to support this connection between the two movements. Before the Revolution, the citizens of France lived in a strict, confined society with no freedom to express their feelings. Government had imposed strong, unfair laws on the common people (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia “French Revolution”). They wanted a voice in a stable government with a strong economy (Johnson 105) and a strong sense of individuality and independence within the people. (Moss and Wilson 180) Eighteenth- century literature was much like the society in which it was produced, restrained. Society was divided into privileged and unprivileged classes, (Leinward 452) with Eighteenth- century writers focusing on the lives of the upper class. (Thompson 857) These writers followed “formal rules” (Thorlby 282), and based their works on scientific observations and logic (Thompson 895). The Revolution gave the common people and writers more freedom to express feelings and stimulated them to use reason. According to Thompson, The Revolution “had a major impact on Nineteenth- Century European Life.” (895) It sent a strong wave of emotion and revival throughout France (Peyre 59). This lead to new laws and standards for the citizens, including newer, less imposing literary standards. Romanticism marked a profound change in both literature and thought. Romanticism, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is defined as “a literary movement (as in early 19th century Europe) marked especially by an emphasis on the imagination and emotions and by the use of autobiographical material.” Although this may be true, there is no single commonly accepted definition of Romanticism, but it has some features upon which there is general agreement. First, it emphasized upon human reason, feeling, emotion, and expression (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia, “Romanticism”) while emphasizing the love of nature, beauty, and liberty. (Leinward 528-529) Thompson defines Romanticism as “ a major literary and cultural movement” that was inspired by the imaginations, inner feelings, and emotions of the Romantics. (895) If one term can be used to describe the forces that have shaped the modern world, it is Romanticism. (Peyre, 2) Romanticism has had such a profound effect on the world since the late 18th century that one author has called it “the profoundest cultural transformation in human history since the invention of the city.” (Compton’s Encyclopedia, “Romanticism”) Harvey and Heseltine state that “The outstanding characteristic of 18th-century French literature had been attached to reason.... About the turn of the century.... literature became a matter of senses and emotions.” (633) They also say that the movement of Romanticism “gave practical expression to the new spirit...” because it recognized that the bounds on literature were “too rigid”. (634) There are many direct relations how the French Revolution influenced the French Romanticism that followed it in the Nineteenth- century. The French Revolution had a major impact on the timeline and progression of Romanticism. Vinaver states that “Neither a revolt or a reaction, Romanticism was a revolutionary fulfillment... And this in turn explains why the European event known as the French Revolution is at once the climax [of Romanticism]...It’s [French Revolution} date, 1789, conveniently divides the Pre- Romanticism [era] from the full flowering of the new culture.” (6) Romanticism starts in about 1774, but does not take off until the last decade of the 18th- century, the same time as the Revolution. The French Revolution provided for many of the problems and basis for many Romantic literary works. First of all, the political change brought by the Revolution, along with the intellectual reverberations brought upon Romanticism. (Harvey and Heseltine 634) Also, Thompson states that “[Romanticism was] shaped by the ideals of the French Revolution.” (895) Finally, Vinaver declares that the Revolution served as “a great source of the problems and tendencies of Romantic proper.” (6) The Revolution also inspired many writers to write romantically. Peyre points this out when he says that it is wrong to call writers “revolutionaries” but when he writes about revolution- inspired works, he  states: “in almost all of them [revolution- inspired romantic writers] could be detected a feeling of revolt...inspired by passion and directed against morals which were considered too constraining.” (59) This shows how the writers stood for and supported the revolution that had occurred forty years before. Thompson makes a clear point along this line when he states that “Romanticism was a major literary and cultural movement that emerged out of the French Revolutionary spirit of the late 1700’s...” (895) In France, the Romantic Poets, especially Victor Hugo and Alfred de Vigney, gave their attention towards the problems arising out of the French Revolution. (Peyre 59) Alfred de Musset wrote philosophically moving lyrics. (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia “French Literature”) Alphonse de Lamartine “delicately analyzed his own emotions”. (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia “French Literature”) Joseph de Maistre, another major figure whose strong political views made him totally oppose the war, still took the Revolution in to consideration when writing. (60) Leinward supports this idea when he says “Poets were moved by the great events of their lives, including the French Revolution.” (528) Hugo, the greatest poet of the 19th century France, perhaps of all French Literature, was the major figure of the Romantic Movement. (Harvey and Halestine 350) His Hernani helped win the revolt against the classic rules of literature. (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia, “French Literature”) His most famous work, Les Miserables, was a novel about the suffering of humanity during the Revolution. (Leinward 529) Vigney, a poet, dramatist, and novelist, played a large role in the Romanticism of the 1820’s. His play, Chatterton, dramatized the misfortune of the poet in a “materialist and pitiless” society. (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia “Vigny”) Alfred de Musset’s philosophical poetry played a major role in the Romanticism of the 1820’s. (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia “French Literature”) Harvey and Heseltine say that “Musset is usually classed with Hugo, Lamartine, and Vigny as one of the four great figures of the Romantic Movement...” (Harvey and Heseltine 502) His lyrical poetry mixed suffering and passion such as in Le Souvenir. (502) Lamartine, described by Harvey and Heseltine as “one of the four great poets of the Romantic Movement” (390), expressed his appreciation for nature as a “reflection of his own moods” in his  Meditations poetiques. (390) This shows how Romantic poets could display their love for nature and human qualities of thought at the same time. The research presented in this paper has shown that the French Revolution of 1789 greatly influenced the Romantic literature of the proceeding 19th century France. The French cultural values before and during the revolution have been presented. The different aspects of Romanticism have been reviewed in detail. Then relations with examples between the Revolution and Romanticism were presented. |The Romantic Era | |The categories which it has become customary to use in distinguishing and classifying "movements" in literature or philosophy and in | |describing the nature of the significant transitions which have taken place in taste and in opinion, are far too rough, crude, | |undiscriminating -- and none of them so hopelessly as the category "Romantic." | |---Arthur O. Lovejoy, "On the Discriminations of Romanticisms" (1924) | |Ask anyone on the street: "what is Romanticism'" and you will certainly receive some kind of reply. Everyone claims to know the meaning | |of the word romantic. The word conveys notions of sentiment and sentimentality, a visionary or idealistic lack of reality. It connotes | |fantasy and fiction. It has been associated with different times and with distant places: the island of Bali, the world of the Arabian | |Nights, the age of the troubadours and even Manhattan. Advertising links it with the effects of lipstick, perfume and soap. If we could | |ask the advertising genius who, fifty years ago, came up with the brilliant cigarette campaign, "blow some my way," he may have | |responded with "it's romantic." | |These meanings cause few problems in every day life -- indeed, few of us wonder about the meaning of Romanticism at all. Yet we use the | |expression freely and casually ("a romantic, candle-lit dinner"). But literary historians and critics as well as European historians | |have been quarreling over the meaning of the word Romanticism for decades, as Lovejoy's comment above makes abundantly clear. One of the| |problems is that the Romantics were liberals and conservatives, revolutionaries and reactionaries. Some were preoccupied with God, | |others were atheistic to the core. Some began their lives as devout Catholics, lived as ardent revolutionaries and died as staunch | |conservatives. | |The expression Romantic gained currency during its own time, roughly 1780-1850. However, even within its own period of existence, few | |Romantics would have agreed on a general meaning. Perhaps this tells us something. To speak of a Romantic era is to identify a period in| |which certain ideas and attitudes arose, gained currency and in most areas of intellectual endeavor, became dominant. That is, they | |became the dominant mode of expression. Which tells us something else about the Romantics: expression was perhaps everything to them -- | |expression in art, music, poetry, drama, literature and philosophy. Just the same, older ideas did not simply wither away. Romantic | |ideas arose both as implicit and explicit criticisms of 18th century Enlightenment thought (see Lecture 9). For the most part, these | |ideas were generated by a sense of inadequacy with the dominant ideals of the Enlightenment and of the society that produced them. | |ROMANTICISM appeared in conflict with the Enlightenment. You could go as far as to say that Romanticism reflected a crisis in | |Enlightenment thought itself, a crisis which shook the comfortable 18th century philosophe out of his intellectual single-mindedness. | |The Romantics were conscious of their unique destiny. In fact, it was self-consciousness which appears as one of the keys elements of | |Romanticism itself. | |The philosophes were too objective -- they chose to see human nature as something uniform. The philosophes had also attacked the Church | |because it blocked human reason. The Romantics attacked the Enlightenment because it blocked the free play of the emotions and | |creativity. The philosophe had turned man into a soulless, thinking machine -- a robot. In a comment typical of the Romantic thrust, | |William Hazlitt (1778-1830) asked, "For the better part of my life all I did was think." And William Godwin (1756-1836), a contemporary | |of Hazlitt’s asked, "what shall I do when I have read all the books'" Christianity had formed a matrix into which medieval man situated | |himself. The Enlightenment replaced the Christian matrix with the mechanical matrix of Newtonian natural philosophy. For the Romantic, | |the result was nothing less than the demotion of the individual. Imagination, sensitivity, feelings, spontaneity and freedom were | |stifled -- choked to death. Man must liberate himself from these intellectual chains. | |Like one of their intellectual fathers, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), the Romantics yearned to reclaim human freedom. Habits, | |values, rules and standards imposed by a civilization grounded in reason and reason only had to be abandoned. "Man is born free and | |everywhere he is in chains," Rousseau had written. Whereas the philosophes saw man in common, that is, as creatures endowed with Reason,| |the Romantics saw diversity and uniqueness. That is, those traits which set one man apart from another, and traits which set one nation | |apart from another. Discover yourself -- express yourself, cried the Romantic artist. Play your own music, write your own drama, paint | |your own personal vision, live, love and suffer in your own way. So instead of the motto, "Sapere aude," "Dare to know!" the Romantics | |took up the battle cry, "Dare to be!" The Romantics were rebels and they knew it. They dared to march to the tune of a different drummer| |-- their own. The Romantics were passionate about their subjectivism, about their tendency toward introspection. Rousseau’s | |autobiography, The Confessions (1781), began with the following words: | |I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without precedent and which will never find an imitator. I desire to set before my fellows the | |likeness of a man in all the truth of nature, and that man myself. Myself alone! I know the feelings of my heart, and I know men. I am | |not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not | |better, at least I am different. | |Romanticism was the new thought, the critical idea and the creative effort necessary to cope with the old ways of confronting | |experience. The Romantic era can be considered as indicative of an age of crisis. Even before 1789, it was believed that the ancien | |regime seemed ready to collapse. Once the French Revolution entered its radical phase in August 1792 (see Lecture 13), the fear of | |political disaster also spread. King killing, Robespierre, the Reign of Terror, and the Napoleonic armies all signaled chaos -- a chaos | |which would dominate European political and cultural life for the next quarter of a century. | |Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution -- in full swing in England since the 1760s -- spread to the Continent in the 1820s, thus adding | |entirely new social concerns (see Lecture 17). The old order -- politics and the economy -- seemed to be falling apart and hence for | |many Romantics, raised the threat of moral disaster as well. Men and women faced the need to build new systems of discipline and order, | |or, at the very least, they had to reshape older systems. The era was prolific in innovative ideas and new art forms. Older systems of | |thought had to come to terms with rapid and apparently unmanageable change. | |In the midst of what has been called the Romantic Era, an era often portrayed as devoted to irrationality and "unreason," the most | |purely rational social science -- classical political economy -- carried on the Enlightenment tradition. Enlightenment rationalism | |continued to be expressed in the language of political and economic liberalism. For example, Jeremy Bentham’s (1748-1832) radical | |critique of traditional politics became an active political movement known as utilitarianism. And revolutionary Jacobinism inundated | |English Chartism -- an English working class movement of the 1830s and 40s. The political left on the Continent as well as many | |socialists, communists and anarchists also reflected their debt to the heritage of the Enlightenment. | |The Romantics defined the Enlightenment as something to which they were clearly opposed. The philosophes oversimplified. But | |Enlightenment thought was and is not a simple and clearly identifiable thing. In fact, what has often been identified as the | |Enlightenment bore very little resemblance to reality. As successors to the Enlightenment, the Romantics were often unfair in their | |appreciation of the 18th century. They failed to recognize just how much they shared with the philosophes. In doing so, the Romantics | |were similar to Renaissance humanists in that both failed to perceive the meaning and importance of the cultural period which had | |preceded their own (see Lecture 4). The humanists, in fact, invented a "middle age" so as to define themselves more carefully. As a | |result, the humanists enhanced their own self-evaluation and prestige in their own eyes. The humanists foisted an error on subsequent | |generations of thinkers. Their error lay in their evaluation of the past as well as in their simple failure to apprehend or even show a | |remote interest in the cultural heritage of the medieval world. Both aspects of the error are important. | |With the Romantics, it shows first how men make an identity for themselves by defining an enemy, making clear what they oppose, thus | |making life into a battle. Second, it is evident that factual, accurate, subtle understanding makes the enemy mere men. Even before | |1789, the Romantics opposed the superficiality of the conventions of an artificial, urban and aristocratic society. They blurred | |distinctions between its decadent, fashionable Christianity or unemotional Deism and the irreligion or anti-clericalism of the | |philosophes. The philosophes, expert in defining themselves in conflict with their enemy -- the Church -- helped to create the mythical | |ungodly Enlightenment many Romantics so clearly opposed. | |It was during the French Revolution and for fifty or sixty years afterward that the Romantics clarified their opposition to the | |Enlightenment. This opposition was based on equal measures of truth and fiction. The Romantics rejected what they thought the | |philosophes represented. And over time, the Romantics came to oppose and criticize not only the Enlightenment, but also ideas derived | |from it and the men who were influenced by it. | |The period from 1793 to 1815 was a period of European war. War, yes, but also revolutionary combat -- partisanship seemed normal. | |Increasingly, however, the Romantics rejected those aspects of the French Revolution -- the Terror and Napoleon -- which seemed to them | |to have sprung from the heads of the philosophes themselves. For instance, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was living in Paris during the| |heady days of 1789 -- he was, at the time, only 19 years old. In his autobiographical poem, The Prelude, he reveals his experience of | |the first days of the Revolution. Wordsworth read his poem to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) in 1805--I might add that The Prelude | |is epic in proportion as it weighs in at eight thousand lines. By 1805, the bliss that carried Wordsworth and Coleridge in the 1790s, | |had all but vanished. | |But for some Romantics, aristocrats, revolutionary armies, natural rights and constitutionalism were not real enemies. There were new | |enemies on the horizon, especially after the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). The Romantics concentrated their attack on the | |heartlessness of bourgeois liberalism as well as the nature of urban industrial society. Industrial society brought new problems: | |soulless individualism, economic egoism, utilitarianism, materialism and the cash nexus. Industrial society came under attack by new | |critics: the utopian socialists and communists. But there were also men like Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) and Thomas Carlyle | |(1795-1881) who identified the threat of egoism as the chief danger of their times. Egoism dominated the bourgeoisie, especially in | |France and in England. Higher virtues and social concerns were subsumed by the cash nexus and crass materialism of an industrial | |capitalist society. Artists and intellectuals attacked the philistinism of the bourgeoisie for their lack of taste and their lack of an | |higher morality. Ironically, the brunt of their attack fell on the social class which had produced the generation of Romantics. | |Romanticism reveals the persistence of Enlightenment thought, the Romantic’s definition of themselves and a gradual awareness of a new | |enemy. The shift to a new enemy reminds us that the Romantic Age was also an eclectic age. The Enlightenment was no monolithic structure| |-- neither was Romanticism, however we define it. Ideas of an age seldom exist as total systems. Our labels too easily let us forget | |that past ideas form the context in which new ideas are developed and expressed. Intellectuals do manage to innovate and their | |innovations are oftentimes not always recombinations of what they have embraced in their education. Intellectual and geographic contexts| |differ from state to state -- even though French culture seemed to have dominated the Continent during the early decades of the 19th | |century. England is the obvious exception. Germany is another example -- the movement known as Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) -- was| |an independent cultural development. | |National variations were enhanced when, under the direct effect of the Napoleonic wars, boundaries were closed and the easy | |international interchange of ideas was inhibited. But war was not the only element that contributed to the somewhat inhibited flow of | |ideas. Profound antagonism and the desire to create autonomous cultures was also partially responsible. This itself grew out of newly | |found nationalist ideologies which were indeed characteristic of Romanticism itself. And within each nation state, institutional and | |social differences provided limits to the general assimilation of a clearly defined set of ideas. In France, for example, the academies | |were strong and during the Napoleonic era, censorship was common. Artists and intellectuals alike were prevented from innovating or | |adopting new ideas. In Germany, on the other hand, things were quite different. The social structure, the heavy academism and specific | |institutional traits blocked any possibility of learning or expressing new modes of thought. | |Most important were the progressive changes in the potential audience artists and intellectuals now faced -- most of them now had to | |depend upon that audience. Where the audience was very small, as in Austria and parts of Germany, the results often ranged between the | |extremes of great openness to rigid conservatism. Where the audience was steadily growing, as in France or England, and where | |urbanization and the growth of a middle class was transforming the expectations of the artist and intellectual, there was room for | |experiment, innovation and oftentimes, disastrous failure. Here, artists and intellectuals could no longer depend upon aristocratic | |patronage. Popularity among the new and powerful middle class audience became a rite of passage. | |At the same time, intellectuals criticized the tasteless and unreceptive philistine bourgeoisie. Ironically, they were criticizing the | |same class and the same mentality from which they themselves had emerged and which had supported them. In this respect, the Romantic age| |was similar to the age of Enlightenment. A free press and careers open to talent provided possibilities of competitive innovation. This | |led to new efforts to literally train audiences to be receptive to the productions of artists and intellectuals. Meanwhile, literary | |hacks and Grub Street writers produced popular pot boilers for the masses. All these characteristics placed limits upon the activities | |of the Romantics. These limits could not be ignored. In fact, these limits often exerted pressures that can be identified as causes of | |the Romantic movement itself. | |There were direct, immediate and forceful events that many British and European Romantics experienced in their youth. The French | |Revolution was a universal phenomenon that affected them all. And the Napoleonic wars after 1799 also influenced an entire generation of| |European writers, composers and artists. Those who were in their youth in the 1790s felt a chasm dividing them from an earlier, | |pre-revolutionary generation. Those who had seen Napoleon seemed different and felt different from those who were simply too young to | |understand. The difference lay in a great discrepancy in the quality of their experience. Great European events, such as the Revolution | |and Napoleon, gave identity to generations and made them feel as one -- a shared experience. As a consequence, the qualities of thought | |and behavior in 1790 was drastically different from what it was in 1820. In the Romantic era, men and women felt these temporal and | |experiential differences consciously and intensely. It is obvious, I suppose, that only after Napoleon could the cults of the hero, of | |hero worship and of the genius take full form. And only after 1815 could youth complain that their time no longer offered opportunities | |for heroism or greatness -- only their predecessors had known these opportunities. | |The intellectual historian or historian of ideas always faces problems. Questions of meaning, interpretation and an acceptance of a | |particular Zeitgeist, or climate of opinion or world view is serious but difficult stuff. Although we frequently use words like | |Enlightenment or Romanticism to describe intellectual or perhaps cultural events, these expressions sometimes cause more harm than good.| |There is, for instance, no 18th century document, no perfect exemplar or ideal type, to use Max Weber’s word, which can be called | |"enlightened." There is, unfortunately, no perfect document or ideal type of which we may pronounce, "this is Romantic." | |We have seen that one way to define the Romantics is to distinguish them from the philosophes. But, for both the philosophes and the | |Romantics, Nature was accepted as a general standard. Nature was natural -- and this supplied standards for beauty and for morality. The| |Enlightenment’s appreciation of Nature was, of course, derived wholly from Isaac Newton. The physical world was orderly, explicable, | |regular, logical. It was, as we are all now convinced, a Nature subject to laws which could be expressed with mathematical certainty. | |Universal truths -- like natural rights -- were the object of science and of philosophy. And the uniformity of Nature permitted a | |knowledge which was rapidly accumulating as a consequence of man’s rational capacity and the use of science to penetrate the mysteries | |of nature. The Enlightenment defined knowledge in a Lockian manner--that is, a knowledge based on sense impressions. This was an | |environmentalist psychology, if you will, a psychology in which men know only what their sense impressions allowed their faculty of | |reason to understand. | |The Enlightenment was rationalist -- it glorified human reason. Reason illustrated the power of analysis -- Reason was the power of | |associating like experiences in order to generalize about them inductively. Reason was a common human possession -- it was held by all | |men. Even American "savages" were endowed with reason, hence the 18th century emphasis on "common sense," and the "noble savage." Common| |sense -- revealed by reason -- would admit a groundwork for a common morality. As nature was studied in order to discover its universal | |aspects, men began to accept that what was most worth knowing and what was therefore most valuable, was what they had in common with one| |another. Society, then, became an object of science. Society revealed self-evident truths about human nature -- self-evident truths | |about natural rights. | |Social and political thought was individualistic and atomistic. As the physical universe was ultimately machinelike, so social | |organization could be fashioned after the machine. Science pronounced what society ought to become in view of man’s natural needs. These| |needs were not being fulfilled by the past -- for this reason, the medieval matrix and the ancien regime inhibited man’s progress. The | |desire was to shape institutions, to change men and to produce a better society -- knowledge, morality and human happiness. The | |intention was at once cosmopolitan and humanitarian. | |The Romantics felt all the opinions of the Enlightenment were fraught with dangerous errors and oversimplifications. Romanticism may | |then be considered as a critique of the inadequacies of what it held to be Enlightened thought. The critique of the Romantics -- | |sometime open, sometimes hidden -- can be seen as a new study of the bases or knowledge and of the whole scientific enterprise. It | |rejected a science based on physics -- physics was inadequate to describe the reality of experience. "O for a life of sensations rather | |than of thoughts," wrote John Keats (1795-1821). And William Blake (1757-1827) admonished us all to "Bathe in the waters of life." And | |Keats again, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." | |The Romantic universe was expanding, evolving, becoming -- it was organic, it was alive. The Romantics sought their soul in the science | |of life, not the science of celestial mechanics. They moved from planets to plants. The experience was positively exhilarating, | |explosive and liberating -- liberation from the soulless, materialistic, thinking mechanism that was man. The 18th century had created | |it. The Romantics found it oppressive , hence the focus on liberation. Listen to the way Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) put it in | |Prometheus Unbound: | |The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness! | |The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness, | |The vaporous exultation not to be confined! | |Ha! Ha! The animation of delight | |Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, | |And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind. | |The Romantics returned God to Nature -- the age revived the unseen world, the supernatural, the mysterious, the world of medieval man. | |It is no accident that the first gothic novel appears early in the Romantic Age. Nature came to be viewed historically. The world was | |developing, it was a world of continuous process, it was a world in the process of becoming. And this continuous organic process could | |only be understood through historical thought. And here we have come almost full circle to the views expressed by Giambattista Vico (see| |Lecture 10) a century earlier. This is perhaps the single most revolutionary aspect of the Romantic Age. An admiration for all the | |potency and diversity of living nature superseded a concern for the discovery of its universal traits. In a word, the Romantics embraced| |relativism. They did not seek universal abstract laws as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) had. Instead, they saw history as a process of | |unfolding, a becoming. Was not this the upshot of what G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) had argued in his philosophy of history' And look at | |the time frame: Kant - 1780s, Hegel - 1820s and 30s. | |The Romantics sought Nature’s glorious diversity of detail -- especially its moral and emotional relation to mankind. On this score, the| |Romantics criticized the 18th century. The philosophe was cold, mechanical, logical and unfeeling. There was no warmth in the heart. For| |the Romantics, warmth of heart was found and indeed enhanced by a communion with Nature. The heart has reasons that Reason is not | |equipped to understand. The heart was a source of knowledge -- the location of ideas "felt" as sensations rather than thoughts. | |Intuition was equated with that which men feel strongly. Men could learn by experiment or by logical process—but men could learn more in| |intuitive flashes and feelings, by learning to trust their instincts. The Romantics distrusted calculation and stressed the limitations | |of scientific knowledge. The rationality of science fails to apprehend the variety and fullness of reality. Rational analysis destroys | |the naïve experience of the stream of sensations and in this violation, leads men into error. | |One power possessed by the Romantic, a power distinct and superior to reason, was imagination. Imagination might apprehend immediate | |reality and create in accordance with it. And the belief that the uncultured—that is, the primitive -- know not merely differently but | |best is an example of how the Romantics reinterpreted the irrational aspect of reality -- the Imagination. The Romantics did not merely | |say that there were irrational ways of intuiting reality. They rejected materialism and utilitarianism as types of personal behavior and| |as philosophies. They sought regeneration -- a regeneration we can liken to that of the medieval heretic or saint. They favored selfless| |enthusiasm, an enthusiasm which was an expression of faith and not as the product of utilitarian calculation. Emotion -- unbridled | |emotion -- was celebrated irrespective of its consequences. | |The 18th century life of mind was incomplete. The Romantics opted for a life of the heart. Their relativism made them appreciative of | |diversity in man and in nature. There are no universal laws. There are certainly no laws which would explain man. The philosophe | |congratulated himself for helping to destroy the ancien regime. And today, we can perhaps say, "good job!" But after all the | |destruction, after the ancient idols fell, and after the dust had cleared, there remained nothing to take its place. In stepped the | |Romantics who sought to restore the organic quality of the past, especially the medieval past, the past so detested by the pompous, | |powdered-wig philosophe. | |Truth and beauty were human attributes. A truth and beauty which emanated from the poet’s soul and the artist’s heart. If the poets are,| |as Shelley wrote in 1821, the "unacknowledged legislator’s of the world," it was world of fantasy, intuition, instinct and emotion. It | |was a human world. | Characteristics of Romanticism Romanticism is a movement that emerged as a reaction against Neoclassicism, the age preceding the Romantic movement. The Neoclassical age was also called the 'The age of Enlightenment', which emphasized on reason and logic. The Romantic period wanted to break away from the traditions and conventions that were dear to the Neoclassical age and make way for individuality and experimentation. The Romantic movement is said to have emerged in Germany, which soon spread to England as well as France, however, the main source of inspiration for Romanticism came from the events and ideologies of the French Revolution. Other than this, even the industrial revolution which began during the same period is also said to be responsible for the development of Romanticism. Though Romantic elements were found in art and literature since several centuries, it was the publication of 'Lyrical Ballads' by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 that marked the beginning of the Romantic period. To understand Romanticism better, it is very important to learn about the Romanticism characteristics. Read more on importance of literature. Characteristics of Romanticism As literature was the first to be influenced by the ideas and ideologies of Romanticism before spreading to art and music, the characteristics of romanticism in literature are the same for other art forms too. Therefore, let us look at some of the Romanticism characteristics which influenced all the artistic fields of that period. Love of Nature: The Romantics greatly emphasized on the importance of nature, and one of the main characteristics of Romanticism in poetry is the beauty of nature found in the country life. This was mainly because the industrial revolution had taken man from the peaceful country life towards the city life, transforming man's natural order. Nature was not only appreciated for its physical beauty by the Romantics, but also for its ability to help the urban man find his true identity. Emotions v/s Rationality: Unlike the Neoclassical age which focused on rationality and intellect, Romanticism placed human emotions, feelings, instinct and intuition above everything else. While the poets in the former era adhered to the rules and regulations while selecting a subject and writing about it, the Romantic writers trusted their emotions and feelings to create poetry. This belief can be confirmed from the definition of poetry by William Wordsworth, where he says that "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". The emphasis on emotions was also spread to music created in the Romantic period, and was seen in the compositions made by great musicians like Weber, Beethoven, Schumann, etc. Artist, the Creator: As the Romantic period emphasized on emotions, the position or role of the artist or the poet also gained supremacy. In the earlier times, the artist was seen as a person who imitated the external world through his art. However, Romanticism reverted this belief. The poet or artist was seen as a creator of a piece of work which reflected his individuality and inner mind. It was also for the first time that the poems written in the first person were being accepted, as the poetic persona became one with the voice of the poet. Nationalism: The Romantics borrowed heavily from the folklore and the popular art. During the earlier periods, literature and art were considered to belong to the high class educated people, and the country folks were not considered fit to enjoy them. Also, the language used in these works were highly poetic, which was totally different from that which was spoken by people. However, Romanticism changed all this. Their works were influenced from the ballads and folklore that were created by the masses or the common people, rather than from the literary works that were popular. Apart from poetry, adopting from the folklore and ballads is also one of the very important characteristics of Romanticism in music. As the Romantics became interested and focused on developing the folklore, culture, language, customs and traditions of their own country, they developed a sense of Nationalism which reflected in their works. Also, the language used in Romantic poems were simple which was usually used in everyday life. Exoticism: Along with Nationalism, the Romantics even developed the love of the exotic. Hence, in many of the literary as well as artistic works of that period, the far off and mysterious locations were depicted. Though this was completely opposite from the ideal of Nationalism, they never clashed with each other. The reason for this is that just like the exotic locations, the people did not know about the folklore of their places before, and so they seemed to be as vague as the far away places. Exoticism is also one of the most prominent characteristics of Romanticism in art, along with sentimentality and spirituality. Supernatural: Another characteristic of Romanticism is the belief in the supernatural. The Romantics were interested in the supernatural and included it in their works. This fascination for the mysterious and the unreal also lead to the development of the Gothic romance which became popular during this period. Supernatural elements can be seen in Coleridge's, 'Kubla Khan' and in Keats' poem 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'. As no Romantic writer or artist followed any kind of rules or regulations, it is actually a little difficult to define the Romanticism characteristics accurately. Nevertheless, these are some of the characteristics of Romanticism that reflect in the works of that period. Though many writers and critics have said that Romanticism is irrational, one thing that cannot be denied is that it attempted to portray the world, especially human nature in a new light. ((((((((((