Romantics/ Romanticism

Romantics/ Romanticism

1. The Sublime

   • Sublime reaction to nature
   • Majestic, wild sometimes savage. Viewers overwhelmed, awe-struck sometimes terrified by the sublime
   • Natural phenomena, mountains waterfalls, turbulent seas and thunderstorms "delightful terrors" inspired by sublime visions.
   • Reminds viewers of insignificance in the force of nature

2. Characterised by 5 "I's"

   • Imagination
     • emphasised over "reason". Imagination necessary for creating all art.
   • Intuition
     • Feelings or instincts rather than reason, emotions important
   • Idealism
     • Can make the world a better place
   • Inspiration
     • Spontaneous rather than precise
   • Individuality
     • Celebrate the individual. During this time period Womens Rights and Abolitionism taking root as major movements

3. Literature

   • American Romanticism most strongly impacted literature
   • Writers explored supernatural and gothic themes

4. Definition

   • Romanticism refers to a movement in art, literature and music during the 18th and 19th centuries philosophical, literary artistic and cultural era
   • Reverence for the natural world. Physical and emotional passion. Interest in the mythic and supernatural.
   • Spontaneity in Romantic Poetry. Movement was still concerned with composition of translating emotive response into poetic form. Many favoured the Sonnet Form

5. Origins

   • Reaction against Neo-classism. Links back to courtly love and chivalry
   • Began to take root as a movement following the French Revolution
     • Say it as a means for change.
   • Reaction against Enlightenment ideas of the day. And Industrial Revolution

6. Visual Arts

   • Neo-classical art
     • rigid, severe, unemotional. Ancient Greece and Rome
   • Romantic Art
     • emotional, individualistic, exotic. Reaction to Neoclassicism.

7. Romantic Poets - Order of Birth

   • 1. William Blake
   • 2. William Wordsworth
   • 3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
   • 4. Lord Byron
   • 5. Percy Bysshe Shelley
   • 6. John Keats