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Romanticism

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1750-1900

   Wanderer above the sea of fog by Caspar David Friedrich
   Wanderer above the sea of fog by Caspar David Friedrich

          Romantics redirects here, for the band, see The Romantics

   Romanticism is an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that
   originated in 18th century Western Europe during the industrial
   revolution. In part a revolt against aristocratic, social, and
   political norms of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the
   rationalization of nature, in art and literature. It stressed strong
   emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on
   such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in
   confronting the sublimity of nature. It elevated folk art, nature and
   custom, as well as arguing for an epistemology based on nature, which
   included human activity conditioned by nature in the form of language,
   custom and usage. It was influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment and
   elevated medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be
   from the medieval period. The name "romantic" itself comes from the
   term " romance" which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating
   in medieval literature and romantic literature.

   The ideologies and events of the French Revolution and Industrial
   Revolution are thought to have influenced the movement. Romanticism
   elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic
   individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the
   individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom
   from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to
   historical and natural inevitability in the representation of its
   ideas.

Characteristics

   In a general sense, Romanticism refers to several groups of artists,
   poets, writers, and musicians as well as political, philosophical and
   social thinkers and trends of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in
   Europe. But a precise characterization and a specific description of
   Romanticism have been objects of intellectual history and literary
   history for all of the twentieth century without any great measure of
   consensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the
   difficulty of this problem in his seminal article "On The
   Discrimination of Romanticisms" in his Essays in the History of Ideas
   (1948); some scholars see romanticism as completely continuous with the
   present, some see it as the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it
   as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment, and
   still others date it firmly in the direct aftermath of the French
   Revolution. Another definition comes from Charles Baudelaire:
   "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor
   exact truth, but in a way of feeling."

   Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key moment in
   the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment.
   Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of
   deductive reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and
   feeling, to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being
   accused of irrationalism.

Music

Romanticism and music

   Ludwig van Beethoven
   Ludwig van Beethoven

   - In general, the term "Romanticism" when applied to music has come to
   mean the period roughly from the 1820s until 1910. The contemporary
   application of 'romantic' to music did not coincide with modern
   categories: in 1810 E.T.A. Hoffmann called Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven
   the three "Romantic Composers", and Ludwig Spohr used the term "good
   Romantic style" to apply to parts of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
   Technically, Mozart is considered classical and by most standards,
   Beethoven is the start of the musical Romantic period. By the early
   20th century, the sense that there had been a decisive break with the
   musical past led to the establishment of the 19th century as " The
   Romantic Era," and as such it is referred to in the standard
   encyclopedias of music.

   The traditional modern discussion of the music of Romanticism includes
   elements, such as the growing use of folk music, which are also
   directly related to the broader current of Romantic nationalism in the
   arts (for a detailed discussion of its musical manifestations, see
   musical nationalism).
   Frédéric Chopin
   Frédéric Chopin

   Some aspects of Romanticism are already present in eighteenth-century
   music. The heightened contrasts and emotions of Sturm und Drang [German
   for "Storm and Stress"] seem a precursor of the Gothic in literature,
   or the sanguinary elements of some of the operas of the period of the
   French Revolution. The libretti of Lorenzo da Ponte for Mozart, and the
   eloquent music the latter wrote for them, convey a new sense of
   individuality and freedom. In Beethoven, the Romantic generation's
   ideal of the artist as hero, the concept of the Romantic musician
   begins to reveal itself— the man who morally challenged the Emperor
   Napoleon himself by striking him out from the dedication of the Eroica
   Symphony. In Beethoven's Fidelio he creates the apotheosis of the
   'rescue operas' which were another feature of French musical culture
   during the revolutionary period, in order to hymn the freedom which
   underlay the thinking of all radical artists in the years of hope after
   the Congress of Vienna.
   Felix Mendelssohn
   Felix Mendelssohn

   Of the contemporary music culture, the romantic musician followed a
   public career, depending on sensitive middle-class audiences rather
   than on a courtly patron. Public persona characterized a new generation
   of virtuosi who made their way as soloists, epitomized in the careers
   of Paganini and Liszt.

   Beethoven's use of tonal architecture in such a way as to allow
   significant expansion of musical forms and structures was immediately
   recognized as bringing a new dimension to music. The later piano music
   and string quartets, especially, showed the way to a completely
   unexplored musical universe. The writer, critic (and composer) Hoffmann
   was able to write of the supremacy of instrumental music over vocal
   music in expressiveness, a concept which would previously have been
   regarded as absurd. Hoffmann himself, as a practitioner both of music
   and literature, encouraged the notion of music as 'programmatic' or
   telling a story, an idea which new audiences found attractive, however
   irritating it was to some composers (e.g. Felix Mendelssohn). New
   developments in instrumental technology in the early nineteenth
   century—iron frames for pianos, wound metal strings for string
   instruments—enabled louder dynamics, more varied tone colours, and the
   potential for sensational virtuosity. Such developments swelled the
   length of pieces, introduced programmatic titles, and created new
   genres such as the free standing overture or tone-poem, the piano
   fantasy, nocturne and rhapsody, and the virtuoso concerto, which became
   central to musical romanticism.
   Richard Wagner
   Richard Wagner

   In opera, a new Romantic atmosphere combining supernatural terror and
   melodramatic plot in a folkloric context was most successfully achieved
   by Weber's Der Freischütz ( 1817, 1821). Enriched timbre and colour
   marked the early orchestration of Hector Berlioz in France, and the
   grand operas of Meyerbeer. Amongst the radical fringe of what became
   mockingly characterised (adopting Wagner's own words) as 'artists of
   the future', Liszt and Wagner each embodied the Romantic cult of the
   free, inspired, charismatic, perhaps ruthlessly unconventional
   individual artistic personality.

   It is the period of 1815 to 1848 which must be regarded as the true age
   of Romanticism in music - the age of the last compositions of Beethoven
   (d. 1827) and Schubert (d. 1828), of the works of Schumann (d. 1856)
   and Chopin (d.1849), of the early struggles of Berlioz and Richard
   Wagner, of the great virtuosi such as Paganini (d. 1840), and the young
   Liszt and Thalberg. Now that we are able to listen to the work of
   Mendelssohn (d. 1847) stripped of the Biedermeier reputation unfairly
   attached to it, he can also be placed in this more appropriate context.
   After this period, with Chopin and Paganini dead, Liszt retired from
   the concert platform at a minor German court, Wagner effectively in
   exile until he obtained royal patronage in Bavaria, and Berlioz still
   struggling with the bourgeois liberalism which all but smothered
   radical artistic endeavour in Europe, Romanticism in music was surely
   past its prime—giving way, rather, to the period of musical romantics.

Visual art and literature

   Third of May by Francisco Goya
   Third of May by Francisco Goya

   In visual art and literature, "Romanticism" typically refers to the
   late 18th century and the 19th century. Recurring themes found in
   Romantic literature are the criticism of the past, emphasis on women
   and children, and respect for nature. Furthermore, several romantic
   authors, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, based their writings on the
   supernatural/ occult and human psychology, which they were fascinated
   with.

   The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of
   Romanticism with the international success of his Ossian cycle of poems
   published in 1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young Walter Scott.

   An early German influence came from Johann Wolfgang Goethe whose 1774
   novel The Sorrows of Young Werther had young men throughout Europe
   emulating its protagonist, a young artist with a very sensitive and
   passionate temperament. At that time Germany was a multitude of small
   separate states, and Goethe's works would have a seminal influence in
   developing a unifying sense of nationalism. Important writers of early
   German romanticism were Ludwig Tieck, Novalis ( Heinrich von
   Ofterdingen, 1799) and Friedrich Hoelderlin. Heidelberg later became a
   centre of German romanticism, where writers and poets such as Clemens
   Brentano, Achim von Arnim and Joseph von Eichendorff met regularly in
   literary circles. Romanticists often focused on emotions and dreams in
   their works. Other important motifs in German Romanticism are
   travelling, nature and ancient myths. The late German Romanticism (of,
   for example, E.T.A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann - The Sandman, 1817, and
   Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild - The Marble Statue, 1819) was somewhat
   darker in its motifs and has some gothic elements.
   The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken, J.M.W.
   Turner
   The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken, J.M.W.
   Turner

   Romanticism in British literature developed in a different form
   slightly later, mostly associated with the poets William Wordsworth and
   Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose co-authored book " Lyrical Ballads" (
   1798) sought to reject Augustan poetry in favour of more direct speech
   derived from folk traditions. Both poets were also involved in Utopian
   social thought in the wake of the French Revolution. The poet and
   painter William Blake is the most extreme example of the Romantic
   sensibility in Britain, epitomised by his claim “I must create a system
   or be enslaved by another man's”. Blake's artistic work is also
   strongly influenced by Medieval illuminated books. The painters J.M.W.
   Turner and John Constable are also generally associated with
   Romanticism. Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John
   Keats constitute another phase of Romanticism in Britain. The historian
   Thomas Carlyle and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood represent the last
   phase of transformation into Victorian culture. William Butler Yeats,
   born in 1865, referred to his generation as "the last romantics."
   Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix
   Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix

   In predominantly Roman Catholic countries Romanticism was less
   pronounced than in Germany and Britain, and tended to develop later,
   after the rise of Napoleon. François-René de Chateaubriand is often
   called the "Father of French Romanticism". In France, the movement is
   associated with the 19th century, particularly in the paintings of
   Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, the plays, poems and novels of
   Victor Hugo (such as Les Misérables and Ninety-Three), and the novels
   of Stendhal. The composer Hector Berlioz is also important.

   Inside Russia, the principal exponent of Romanticism is Alexander
   Pushkin. Mikhail Lermontov attempted to analyse and bring to light the
   deepest reasons for the Romantic idea of metaphysical discontent with
   society and self, and was much influenced by Lord Byron. The poet
   Fyodor Tyutchev was also an important figure of the movement in Russia,
   and was heavily influenced by the German Romantics.

   Romanticism played an essential role in the national awakening of many
   Central European peoples lacking their own national states,
   particularly in Poland, which had recently lost its independence to
   Russia when its army crushed the Polish Rebellion under the reactionary
   Nicholas I. Revival of ancient myths, customs and traditions by
   Romanticist poets and painters helped to distinguish their indigenous
   cultures from those of the dominant nations (Russians, Germans,
   Austrians, Turks, etc.). Patriotism, nationalism, revolution and armed
   struggle for independence also became popular themes in the arts of
   this period. Arguably, the most distinguished Romanticist poet of this
   part of Europe was Adam Mickiewicz, who developed an idea that Poland
   was the Messiah of Nations, predestined to suffer just as Jesus had
   suffered to save all the people.
   A Romantic heroine: in The Lady of Shalott (1888) John William
   Waterhouse's realistic technique depicts a neo-medieval subject drawn
   from Arthurian Romance
   A Romantic heroine: in The Lady of Shalott (1888) John William
   Waterhouse's realistic technique depicts a neo-medieval subject drawn
   from Arthurian Romance

   In the United States, the romantic gothic makes an early appearance
   with Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1819), followed from
   1823 onwards by the fresh Leatherstocking tales of James Fenimore
   Cooper, with their emphasis on heroic simplicity and their fervent
   landscape descriptions of an already-exotic mythicized frontier peopled
   by " noble savages", similar to the philosophical theory of Rousseau,
   like Uncas, " The Last of the Mohicans". There are picturesque elements
   in Washington Irving's essays and travel books. Edgar Allan Poe's tales
   of the macabre and his balladic poetry were more influential in France
   than at home, but the romantic American novel is fully developed in
   Nathaniel Hawthorne's atmosphere and melodrama. Later Transcendentalist
   writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson still show
   elements of its influence, as does the romantic realism of Walt
   Whitman. But by the 1880s, psychological and social realism was
   competing with romanticism. The poetry which Americans wrote and read
   was all romantic until the 1920s: Poe and Hawthorne, as well as Henry
   Wadsworth Longfellow. The poetry of Emily Dickinson – nearly unread in
   her own time – and Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick can be taken as
   the epitomes of American Romantic literature, or as successors to it.
   As elsewhere (England, Germany, France), literary Romanticism had its
   counterpart in the visual arts, most especially in the exaltation of
   untamed America found in the paintings of the Hudson River School.

Nationalism

   One of Romanticism's key ideas and most enduring legacies is the
   assertion of nationalism, which became a central theme of Romantic art
   and political philosophy. From the earliest parts of the movement, with
   their focus on development of national languages and folklore, and the
   importance of local customs and traditions, to the movements which
   would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for self-determination
   of nationalities, nationalism was one of the key vehicles of
   Romanticism, its role, expression and meaning.
   Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830 by Egide Charles Gustave
   Wappers: A romantic vision
   Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830 by Egide Charles Gustave
   Wappers: A romantic vision

   Early Romantic nationalism was strongly inspired by Rousseau, and by
   the ideas of Johann Gottfried von Herder, who in 1784 argued that the
   geography formed the natural economy of a people, and shaped their
   customs and society.

   The nature of nationalism changed dramatically, however, after the
   French Revolution with the rise of Napoleon, and the reactions in other
   nations. Napoleonic nationalism and republicanism were, at first,
   inspirational to movements in other nations: self-determination and a
   consciousness of national unity were held to be two of the reasons why
   France was able to defeat other countries in battle. But as the French
   Republic became Napoleon's Empire, Napoleon became not the inspiration
   for nationalism, but the object of its struggle. In Prussia, the
   development of spiritual renewal as a means to engage in the struggle
   against Napoleon was argued by, among others, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a
   disciple of Kant. The word Volkstum, or nationality, was coined in
   German as part of this resistance to the now conquering emperor. Fichte
   expressed the unity of language and nation in his address "To the
   German Nation" in 1806:

          Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a
          multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any
          human art begins; they understand each other and have the power
          of continuing to make themselves understood more and more
          clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an
          inseparable whole. ...Only when each people, left to itself,
          develops and forms itself in accordance with its own peculiar
          quality, and only when in every people each individual develops
          himself in accordance with that common quality, as well as in
          accordance with his own peculiar quality—then, and then only,
          does the manifestation of divinity appear in its true mirror as
          it ought to be.

   This view of nationalism inspired the collection of folklore by such
   people as the Brothers Grimm, the revival of old epics as national, and
   the construction of new epics as if they were old, as in the Kalevala,
   compiled from Finnish tales and folklore, or Ossian, where the claimed
   ancient roots were invented. The view that fairy tales, unless
   contaminated from outside, literary sources, were preserved in the same
   form over thousands of years, was not exclusive to Romantic
   Nationalists, but fit in well with their views that such tales
   expressed the primordial nature of a people. For instance, the Brothers
   Grimm rejected many tales they collected because of their similarity to
   tales by Charles Perrault, which they thought proved they were not
   truly German tales; Sleeping Beauty survived in their collection
   because the tale of Brynhildr convinced them that the figure of the
   sleeping princess was authentically German.

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