What Is Romanticism?

Key Ideas from Some Big Names

Friedrich von Schlegel

He is usually credited with first using the term “romantic” as applied to literature; literature, he says, “depicts emotional matter in an imaginative form.”

Key Ideas from Some Big Names

William Wordsworth

A poet is, “a man speaking to men.”

A poem is, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” and “emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Social and Political Forces at Work

1) The American Revolution (ended 1783)

2) The French Revolution (began 1789)

3) The Defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo (1815)

4) Industrialization and the “Peterloo” Massacre (1819)

5) Oppression by the Crown and suspension of habeas corpus

Social and Political Forces at Work

6) A new wave of literacy

a) cheaper paper production methods

b) wider circulation of newspapers

c) new lending libraries

d) Sunday schools

7) Enclosure and urbanization

Social and Political Forces at Work

8) Exploitation of young children and others in manufacturing

9) The application of steam technology to drive industrial plants (as opposed to water)

Characteristics of Romantic Literature

The writers we associate with Romanticism are all very different in their work, their theory about their work, and their approaches to creating art and literature.

In general, Romanticism emphasizes

1) Imagination

2) Emotion

3) Freedom

They manifest in different ways, however.

In general, Romanticism emphasizes

1) Subjectivity (the value and uniqueness of the individual poet’s consciousness and perceptions)

2) Spontaneity (unplanned creation and experience)

In general, Romanticism emphasizes

3) Freedom of self-expression and from oppressive rules (witness Byron’s sexual escapades and his affair his half-sister Augusta Leigh)

In general, Romanticism emphasizes

4) Solitary life

a) Byron’s “Manfred”

b) Social rejection of genius (Frankenstein)

5) The superiority of imagination over reason (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”)

In general, Romanticism emphasizes

6) Devotion to beauty and a changing focus of visual aesthetics away from Raphael and mannerism toward the later Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

In general, Romanticism emphasizes

7) Glorification of nature, especially the diminution of individuals in relation to it; an awareness of the sublime

In general, Romanticism emphasizes

8) Fascination with an idealized past, especially the middle ages (Sir Walter Scott, John Keats, e.g.)

In general, Romanticism emphasizes

9) Emotional directness of experience (ironically, Wordsworth’s The Prelude—emotion recollected perhaps too long in tranquility and over-revised)

10) Preoccupation with altered states of consciousness (Coleridge and De Quincey)

Romanticism Is a Complex Phenomenon

Literary and artistic movements in general do not disappear when they have run their course; other ideas might become dominant, but Romanticism has had a profound impact on our culture.