Romanticism (also known as theRomantic movement orRomantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated inEurope towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance ofsubjectivity,imagination, and appreciation ofnature insociety andculture in response to theAge of Enlightenment and theIndustrial Revolution.
The Romanticist movement had a particular fondness for theMiddle Ages, which to them represented an era ofchivalry, heroism, and a more organic relationship between humans and their environment. This idealization contrasted sharply with the values of their contemporary industrial society, which they consideredalienating for itseconomic materialism andenvironmental degradation. The movement's illustration of the Middle Ages was a central theme in debates, with allegations that Romanticist portrayals often overlooked the downsides of medieval life.
The consensus is that Romanticism peaked from 1800 until 1850. However, a "Late Romantic" period and "Neoromantic" revivals are also discussed. These extensions of the movement are characterized by a resistance to the increasinglyexperimental andabstract forms that culminated inmodern art, and thedeconstruction oftraditional tonal harmony in music. They continued the Romantic ideal, stressing depth of emotion in art and music while showcasing technical mastery in a mature Romantic style. By the time ofWorld War I, though, the cultural and artistic climate had changed to such a degree that Romanticism essentially dispersed into subsequent movements. The final Late Romanticist figures to maintain the Romantic ideals died in the 1940s. Though they were still widely respected, they were seen asanachronisms at that point.
Romanticism was a complex movement with a variety of viewpoints that permeatedWestern civilization across the globe. The movement and its opposing ideologies mutually shaped each other over time. After its end, Romantic thought and art exerted a sweeping influence onart andmusic,speculative fiction,philosophy,politics, andenvironmentalism that has endured to the present day.
The movement is the reference for the modern notion of "romanticization" and the act of "romanticizing" something.
For most of the Western world, Romanticism was at its peak from approximately 1800 to 1850. The first Romantic ideas arose from an earlier GermanCounter-Enlightenment movement calledSturm und Drang (German: "Storm and Stress"). This movement directly criticized the Enlightenment's position that humans can fully comprehend the world throughrationality alone, suggesting thatintuition andemotion are key components ofinsight and understanding.[1] Published in 1774, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" byJohann Wolfgang von Goethe began to shape the Romanticist movement and its ideals. The events and ideologies of theFrench Revolution were also direct influences on the movement; many early Romantics throughout Europe sympathized with the ideals and achievements of French revolutionaries.[2]
A confluence of circumstances led to Romanticism's decline in the mid-19th century, including (but not limited to) the rise ofRealism and Naturalism,Charles Darwin's publishing of theOrigin of Species, the transition fromwidespread revolution in Europe to a moreconservative climate, and a shift in public consciousness to the immediate impact of technology andurbanization on theworking class. ByWorld War I, Romanticism was overshadowed by new cultural, social, and political movements, many of them hostile to the perceivedillusions and preoccupations of the Romantics.
However, Romanticism has had a lasting impact on Western civilization, and many works of art, music, and literature that embody the Romantic ideals have been made after the end of the Romantic era. The movement's advocacy for nature appreciation is cited as an influence for currentnature conservation efforts. The majority offilm scores from theGolden Age of Hollywood were written in the lushorchestral Romantic style, and this genre of orchestral cinematic music is still often seen in films of the 21st century. The philosophical underpinnings of the movement have influenced modern political theory, both amongliberals andconservatives.
Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion andindividualism as well as theglorification of the past and nature, preferring the medieval over the classical. Romanticism was partly a reaction to theIndustrial Revolution,[3] and the prevailing ideology of theAge of Enlightenment, especially the scientific rationalization of Nature.[4]
Romanticism prioritized the artist's unique, individual imagination above the strictures of classical form. The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source ofaesthetic experience. It granted a new importance to experiences ofsympathy,awe,wonder, andterror, in part by naturalizing such emotions as responses to the "beautiful" and the "sublime".[10][11]
Romantics stressed the nobility offolk art and ancient cultural practices, but also championedradical politics,unconventional behavior, and authentic spontaneity. In contrast to therationalism andclassicism of theEnlightenment, Romanticism revivedmedievalism[12] and juxtaposed apastoral conception of a more "authentic" European past with a highly critical view of recent social changes, includingurbanization, brought about by theIndustrial Revolution. Romanticism lionized the achievements of "heroic" individuals—especially artists, who began to be represented as cultural leaders (one Romantic luminary,Percy Bysshe Shelley, described poets as the "unacknowledged legislators of the world" in his "Defence of Poetry").
Romanticism placed the highest importance on thefreedom of the artists to authentically express their sentiments and ideas. Romantics like the German painterCaspar David Friedrich believed that an artist's emotions should dictate their formal approach; Friedrich went as far as declaring that "the artist's feeling is his law".[13] The Romantic poetWilliam Wordsworth, thinking along similar lines, wrote that poetry should begin with "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then "recollect[s] in tranquility", enabling the poet to find a suitably unique form for representing such feelings.[14]
The Romantics never doubted that emotionally motivated art would find suitable, harmonious modes for expressing its vital content—if, that is, the artist steered clear of moribund conventions and distracting precedents.Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others thought there were natural laws the imagination of born artists followed instinctively when these individuals were, so to speak, "left alone" during the creative process.[15] These "natural laws" could support a wide range of different formal approaches: as many, perhaps, as there were individuals making personally meaningful works of art. Many Romantics believed that works of artistic genius were created "ex nihilo", "from nothing", without recourse to existing models.[16][17][18] This idea is often called "romantic originality".[19] The translator and prominent RomanticAugust Wilhelm Schlegel argued in hisLectures on Dramatic Arts and Letters that the most valuable quality of human nature is its tendency to diverge and diversify.[20]
According toIsaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals".[21]
Romantic artists also shared a strong belief in the importance and inspirational qualities of Nature. Romantics were distrustful of cities and social conventions. They deploredRestoration andEnlightenment Era artists who were largely concerned with depicting and critiquing social relations, thereby neglecting the relationship between people and Nature. Romantics generally believed a close connection with Nature was beneficial for human beings, especially for individuals who broke off from society in order to encounter the natural world by themselves.
Romantic literature was frequently written in a distinctive, personal "voice". As criticM. H. Abrams has observed, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves."[22] This quality in Romantic literature, in turn, influenced the approach and reception of works in other media; it has seeped into everything from critical evaluations of individual style in painting, fashion, and music, to theauteur movement in modern filmmaking.
The group of words with the root "Roman" in the various European languages, such as "romance" and "Romanesque", has a complicated history. By the 18th century, European languages—notably German, French and Slavic languages—were using the term "Roman" in the sense of the English word "novel", i.e. a work of popular narrative fiction.[23] This usage derived from the term"Romance languages", which referred tovernacular (or popular) language in contrast to formalLatin.[23] Most such novels took the form of "chivalric romance", tales of adventure, devotion and honour.[24]
The founders of Romanticism, critics (and brothers)August Wilhelm Schlegel andFriedrich Schlegel, began to speak ofromantische Poesie ("romantic poetry") in the 1790s, contrasting it with "classic" but in terms of spirit rather than merely dating. Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his 1800 essayGespräch über die Poesie ("Dialogue on Poetry"):
I seek and find the romantic among the older moderns, in Shakespeare, in Cervantes, in Italian poetry, in that age of chivalry, love and fable, from which the phenomenon and the word itself are derived.[25][26]
The modern sense of the term spread more widely in France by its persistent use byGermaine de Staël in herDe l'Allemagne (1813), recounting her travels in Germany.[27] In England Wordsworth wrote in a preface to his poems of 1815 of the "romantic harp" and "classic lyre",[27] but in 1820Byron could still write, perhaps slightly disingenuously,
I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a great struggle about what they call 'Classical' and 'Romantic', terms which were not subjects of classification in England, at least when I left it four or five years ago.[28]
It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, and in 1824 theAcadémie française took the wholly ineffective step of issuing a decree condemning it in literature.[29]
The period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought.Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place "roughly between 1770 and 1848",[30] and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature,M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, perhaps a little later than some other critics.[31] Others have proposed 1780–1830.[32] In other fields and other countries the period denominated as Romantic can be considerably different;musical Romanticism, for example, is generally regarded as only having ceased as a major artistic force as late as 1910, but in an extreme extension theFour Last Songs ofRichard Strauss are described stylistically as "Late Romantic" and were composed in 1946–1948.[33] However, in most fields the Romantic period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier.
The early period of the Romantic era was a time of war, with the French Revolution (1789–1799) followed by theNapoleonic Wars until 1815. These wars, along with the political and social turmoil that went along with them, served as the background for Romanticism.[34] The key generation of French Romantics born between 1795 and 1805 had, in the words of one of their number,Alfred de Vigny, been "conceived between battles, attended school to the rolling of drums".[35] According toJacques Barzun, there were three generations of Romantic artists. The first emerged in the 1790s and 1800s, the second in the 1820s, and the third later in the century.[36]
The more precise characterization and specific definition of Romanticism has been the subject of debate in the fields ofintellectual history andliterary history throughout the 20th century, without any great measure of consensus emerging. That it was part of theCounter-Enlightenment, a reaction against theAge of Enlightenment, is generally accepted in current scholarship. Its relationship to theFrench Revolution, which began in 1789 in the very early stages of the period, is clearly important, but highly variable depending on geography and individual reactions. Most Romantics can be said to be broadly progressive in their views, but a considerable number always had, or developed, a wide range of conservative views,[37] and nationalism was in many countries strongly associated with Romanticism, as discussed in detail below.
In philosophy and the history of ideas, Romanticism was seen by Isaiah Berlin as disrupting for over a century the classic Western traditions of rationality and the idea of moral absolutes and agreed values, leading "to something like the melting away of the very notion of objective truth",[38] and hence not only to nationalism, but alsofascism andtotalitarianism, with a gradual recovery coming only after World War II.[39] For the Romantics, Berlin says,
in the realm of ethics, politics, aesthetics it was the authenticity and sincerity of the pursuit of inner goals that mattered; this applied equally to individuals and groups—states, nations, movements. This is most evident in the aesthetics of romanticism, where the notion of eternal models, a Platonic vision of ideal beauty, which the artist seeks to convey, however imperfectly, on canvas or in sound, is replaced by a passionate belief in spiritual freedom, individual creativity. The painter, the poet, the composer do not hold up a mirror to nature, however ideal, but invent; they do not imitate (the doctrine of mimesis), but create not merely the means but the goals that they pursue; these goals represent the self-expression of the artist's own unique, inner vision, to set aside which in response to the demands of some "external" voice—church, state, public opinion, family friends, arbiters of taste—is an act of betrayal of what alone justifies their existence for those who are in any sense creative.[40]
Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of defining Romanticism in his seminal article "On the Discrimination of Romanticisms" in hisEssays in theHistory of Ideas (1948); some scholars see Romanticism as essentially continuous with the present, some likeRobert Hughes see in it the inaugural moment ofmodernity,[41] while writers of the 19th Century such asChateaubriand,Novalis and Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance toEnlightenment rationalism—a "Counter-Enlightenment"—[42][43] to be associated most closely withGerman Romanticism. Another early definition comes fromCharles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling."[44]
The end of the Romantic era is marked in some areas by a new style ofRealism, which affected literature, especially the novel and drama, painting, and even music, throughVerismo opera. This movement was led by France, withBalzac andFlaubert in literature andCourbet in painting;Stendhal andGoya were important precursors of Realism in their respective media. However, Romantic styles, now often representing the established and safe style against which Realists rebelled, continued to flourish in many fields for the rest of the century and beyond. In music such works from after about 1850 are referred to by some writers as "Late Romantic" and by others as "Neoromantic" or "Postromantic", but other fields do not usually use these terms; in English literature and painting the convenient term "Victorian" avoids having to characterise the period further.
In northern Europe, the Early Romantic visionary optimism and belief that the world was in the process of great change and improvement had largely vanished, and some art became more conventionally political and polemical as its creators engaged polemically with the world as it was. Elsewhere, including in very different ways the United States and Russia, feelings that great change was underway or just about to come were still possible. Displays of intense emotion in art remained prominent, as did the exotic and historical settings pioneered by the Romantics, but experimentation with form and technique was generally reduced, often replaced with meticulous technique, as in the poems of Tennyson or many paintings. If not realist, late 19th-century art was often extremely detailed, and pride was taken in adding authentic details in a way that earlier Romantics did not trouble with. Many Romantic ideas about the nature and purpose of art, above all the pre-eminent importance of originality, remained important for later generations, and often underlie modern views, despite opposition from theorists.[citation needed]
In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children, the isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for nature. Furthermore, several romantic authors, such asEdgar Allan Poe,Charles Maturin andNathaniel Hawthorne, based their writings on thesupernatural/occult and humanpsychology. Romanticism tended to regardsatire as something unworthy of serious attention, a view still influential today.[45] The Romantic movement in literature was preceded by theEnlightenment and succeeded byRealism.
The precursors of Romanticism in English poetry go back to the middle of the 18th century, including figures such asJoseph Warton (headmaster atWinchester College) and his brotherThomas Warton,Professor of Poetry atOxford University.[46] Joseph maintained that invention and imagination were the chief qualities of a poet. The Scottish poetJames Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of hisOssian cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring bothGoethe and the youngWalter Scott.Thomas Chatterton is generally considered the first Romantic poet in English.[47] Both Chatterton and Macpherson's work involved elements of fraud, as what they claimed was earlier literature that they had discovered or compiled was, in fact, entirely their own work. TheGothic novel, beginning withHorace Walpole'sThe Castle of Otranto (1764), was an important precursor of one strain of Romanticism, with a delight in horror and threat, and exotic picturesque settings, matched in Walpole's case by his role in the earlyrevival of Gothic architecture.Tristram Shandy, a novel byLaurence Sterne (1759–1767), introduced a whimsical version of the anti-rationalsentimental novel to the English literary public.
Important motifs in German Romanticism are travelling, nature, for example theGerman Forest, andGermanic myths. The later German Romanticism of, for exampleE. T. A. Hoffmann'sDer Sandmann (The Sandman), 1817, andJoseph Freiherr von Eichendorff'sDas Marmorbild (The Marble Statue), 1819, was darker in its motifs and hasgothic elements. The significance to Romanticism of childhood innocence, the importance of imagination, and racial theories all combined to give an unprecedented importance tofolk literature, non-classicalmythology andchildren's literature, above all in Germany.[citation needed] Brentano and von Arnim were significant literary figures who together publishedDes Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Boy's Magic Horn" orcornucopia), a collection of versified folk tales, in 1806–1808. The first collection ofGrimms' Fairy Tales by theBrothers Grimm was published in 1812.[48] Unlike the much later work ofHans Christian Andersen, who was publishing his invented tales in Danish from 1835, these German works were at least mainly based on collectedfolk tales, and the Grimms remained true to the style of the telling in their early editions, though later rewriting some parts. One of the brothers,Jacob, published in 1835Deutsche Mythologie, a long academic work on Germanic mythology.[49] Another strain is exemplified by Schiller's highly emotional language and the depiction of physical violence in his playThe Robbers of 1781.
InEnglish literature, the key figures of the Romantic movement are considered to be the group of poets includingWilliam Wordsworth,Samuel Taylor Coleridge,John Keats,Lord Byron,Percy Bysshe Shelley and the much olderWilliam Blake, followed later by the isolated figure ofJohn Clare; also such novelists asWalter Scott from Scotland andMary Shelley, and the essayistsWilliam Hazlitt andCharles Lamb. The publication in 1798 ofLyrical Ballads, with many of the finest poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge, is often held to mark the start of the movement. The majority of the poems were by Wordsworth, and many dealt with the lives of the poor in his nativeLake District, or his feelings about nature—which he more fully developed in his long poemThe Prelude, never published in his lifetime. The longest poem in the volume was Coleridge'sThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which showed the Gothic side of English Romanticism, and the exotic settings that many works featured. In the period when they were writing, theLake Poets were widely regarded as a marginal group of radicals, though they were supported by the critic and writerWilliam Hazlitt and others.
In contrast,Lord Byron andWalter Scott achieved enormous fame and influence throughout Europe with works exploiting the violence and drama of their exotic and historical settings;[50] Goethe called Byron "undoubtedly the greatest genius of our century".[51] Scott achieved immediate success with his long narrative poemThe Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, followed by the fullepic poemMarmion in 1808. Both were set in the distant Scottish past, already evoked inOssian;Romanticism and Scotland were to have a long and fruitful partnership. Byron had equal success with the first part ofChilde Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812, followed by four "Turkish tales", all in the form of long poems, starting withThe Giaour in 1813, drawing from hisGrand Tour, which had reached Ottoman Europe, andorientalizing the themes of the Gothic novel in verse. These featured different variations of the "Byronic hero", and his own life contributed a further version. Scott meanwhile was effectively inventing thehistorical novel, beginning in 1814 withWaverley, set in the1745 Jacobite rising, which was a highly profitable success, followed by over 20 furtherWaverley Novels over the next 17 years, with settings going back to theCrusades that he had researched to a degree that was new in literature.[52]
In contrast to Germany, Romanticism in English literature had little connection with nationalism, and the Romantics were often regarded with suspicion for the sympathy many felt for the ideals of theFrench Revolution, whose collapse and replacement with the dictatorship of Napoleon was, as elsewhere in Europe, a shock to the movement. Though his novels celebrated Scottish identity and history, Scott was politically a firm Unionist, but admitted to Jacobite sympathies. Several Romantics spent much time abroad, and a famous stay onLake Geneva with Byron and Shelley in 1816 produced the hugely influential novelFrankenstein by Shelley's wife-to-beMary Shelley and thenovellaThe Vampyre by Byron's doctorJohn William Polidori. The lyrics ofRobert Burns in Scotland, andThomas Moore from Ireland, reflected in different ways their countries and the Romantic interest in folk literature, but neither had a fully Romantic approach to life or their work.
Though they have modern critical champions such asGyörgy Lukács, Scott's novels are today more likely to be experienced in the form of the many operas that composers continued to base on them over the following decades, such asDonizetti'sLucia di Lammermoor andVincenzo Bellini'sI puritani (both 1835). Byron is now most highly regarded for his short lyrics and his generally unromantic prose writings, especially his letters, and his unfinishedsatireDon Juan.[53] Unlike many Romantics, Byron's widely publicised personal life appeared to match his work, and his death at 36 in 1824 from disease when helping theGreek War of Independence appeared from a distance to be a suitably Romantic end, entrenching his legend.[54] Keats in 1821 and Shelley in 1822 both died in Italy, Blake (at almost 70) in 1827, and Coleridge largely ceased to write in the 1820s. Wordsworth was by 1820 respectable and highly regarded, holding a governmentsinecure, but wrote relatively little. In the discussion of English literature, the Romantic period is often regarded as finishing around the 1820s, or sometimes even earlier, although many authors of the succeeding decades were no less committed to Romantic values.
The most significant novelist in English during the peak Romantic period, other than Walter Scott, wasJane Austen, whose essentially conservative world-view had little in common with her Romantic contemporaries, retaining a strong belief in decorum and social rules, though critics such asClaudia L. Johnson have detected tremors under the surface of many works, such asNorthanger Abbey (1817),Mansfield Park (1814) andPersuasion (1817).[55] But around the mid-century the undoubtedly Romantic novels of theYorkshire-basedBrontë family appeared, most notablyCharlotte'sJane Eyre andEmily'sWuthering Heights, both published in 1847, which also introduced more Gothic themes. While these two novels were written and published after the Romantic period is said to have ended, their novels were heavily influenced by Romantic literature they had read as children.
Byron, Keats, and Shelley all wrote for the stage, but with little success in England, with Shelley'sThe Cenci perhaps the best work produced, though that was not played in a public theatre in England until a century after his death. Byron's plays, along with dramatizations of his poems and Scott's novels, were much more popular on the Continent, and especially in France, and through these versions several were turned into operas, many still performed today. If contemporary poets had little success on the stage, the period was a legendary one for performances ofShakespeare, and went some way to restoring his original texts and removing the Augustan "improvements" to them. The greatest actor of the period,Edmund Kean, restored the tragic ending toKing Lear;[56] Coleridge said that "Seeing him act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning."[57]
Although afterunion with England in 1707 Scotland increasingly adopted English language and wider cultural norms, its literature developed a distinct national identity and began to enjoy an international reputation.Allan Ramsay (1686–1758) laid the foundations of a reawakening of interest in older Scottish literature, as well as leading the trend for pastoral poetry, helping to develop theHabbie stanza as apoetic form.[58]James Macpherson (1736–1796) was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation. Claiming to have found poetry written by the ancient bardOssian, he published translations that acquired international popularity, being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of theClassicalepics.Fingal, written in 1762, was speedily translated into many European languages, and its appreciation of natural beauty and treatment of the ancient legend has been credited more than any single work with bringing about the Romantic movement in European, and especially in German literature, through its influence onJohann Gottfried von Herder andJohann Wolfgang von Goethe.[59] It was also popularised in France by figures that includedNapoleon.[60] Eventually it became clear that the poems were not direct translations fromScottish Gaelic, but flowery adaptations made to suit the aesthetic expectations of his audience.[61]
Robert Burns (1759–96) andWalter Scott (1771–1832) were highly influenced by the Ossian cycle. Burns, an Ayrshire poet and lyricist, is widely regarded as thenational poet of Scotland and a major influence on the Romantic movement. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung atHogmanay (the last day of the year), and "Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficialnational anthem of the country.[62] Scott began as a poet and also collected and published Scottish ballads. His first prose work,Waverley in 1814, is often called the first historical novel.[63] It launched a highly successful career, with other historical novels such asRob Roy (1817),The Heart of Midlothian (1818) andIvanhoe (1820). Scott probably did more than any other figure to define and popularise Scottish cultural identity in the nineteenth century.[64] Other major literary figures connected with Romanticism include the poets and novelistsJames Hogg (1770–1835),Allan Cunningham (1784–1842) andJohn Galt (1779–1839).[65]
Scotland was also the location of two of the most important literary magazines of the era,The Edinburgh Review (founded in 1802) andBlackwood's Magazine (founded in 1817), which had a major impact on the development of British literature and drama in the era of Romanticism.[66][67] Ian Duncan and Alex Benchimol suggest that publications like the novels of Scott and these magazines were part of a highly dynamic Scottish Romanticism that by the early nineteenth century, caused Edinburgh to emerge as the cultural capital of Britain and become central to a wider formation of a "British Isles nationalism".[68]
Scottish "national drama" emerged in the early 1800s, as plays with specifically Scottish themes began to dominate the Scottish stage. Theatres had been discouraged by theChurch of Scotland and fears of Jacobite assemblies. In the later eighteenth century, many plays were written for and performed by small amateur companies and were not published and so most have been lost. Towards the end of the century there were "closet dramas", primarily designed to be read, rather than performed, including work by Scott, Hogg, Galt andJoanna Baillie (1762–1851), often influenced by the ballad tradition andGothic Romanticism.[69]
Romanticism was relatively late in developingin French literature, more so than in the visual arts. The 18th-century precursor to Romanticism, the cult of sensibility, had become associated with theAncien Régime, and the French Revolution had been more of an inspiration to foreign writers than those experiencing it at first-hand. The first major figure wasFrançois-René de Chateaubriand, an aristocrat who had remained a royalist throughout the Revolution, and returned to France from exile in England and America under Napoleon, with whose regime he had an uneasy relationship. His writings, all in prose, included some fiction, such as his influentialnovella of exileRené (1802), which anticipated Byron in its alienated hero, but mostly contemporary history and politics, his travels, a defence of religion and the medieval spirit (Génie du christianisme, 1802), and finally in the 1830s and 1840s his enormousautobiographyMémoires d'Outre-Tombe ("Memoirs from beyond the grave").[70]
The "battle ofHernani" was fought nightly at the theatre in 1830: lithograph, byJ. J. Grandville
After theBourbon Restoration, French Romanticism developed in the lively world ofParisian theatre, with productions ofShakespeare, Schiller (in France a key Romantic author), and adaptations of Scott and Byron alongside French authors, several of whom began to write in the late 1820s. Cliques of pro- and anti-Romantics developed, and productions were often accompanied by raucous vocalizing by the two sides, including the shouted assertion by one theatregoer in 1822 that "Shakespeare, c'est l'aide-de-camp de Wellington" ("Shakespeare isWellington'saide-de-camp").[71]Alexandre Dumas began as a dramatist, with a series of successes beginning withHenri III et sa cour (1829) before turning to novels that were mostly historical adventures somewhat in the manner of Scott, most famouslyThe Three Musketeers andThe Count of Monte Cristo, both of 1844.Victor Hugo published as a poet in the 1820s before achieving success on the stage withHernani—a historical drama in a quasi-Shakespearean style that had famously riotous performances on its first run in 1830.[72] Like Dumas, Hugo is best known for his novels, and was already writingThe Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), one of the best known works, which became a paradigm of the French Romantic movement. The preface to his unperformed playCromwell gives an important manifesto of French Romanticism, stating that "there are no rules, or models". The career ofProsper Mérimée followed a similar pattern; he is now best known as the originator of the story ofCarmen, with his novella published 1845. Alfred de Vigny remains best known as a dramatist, with his play on the life of the English poetChatterton (1835) perhaps his best work.George Sand was a central figure of the Parisian literary scene, famous both for her novels and criticism and her affairs withChopin and several others;[73] she too was inspired by the theatre, and wrote works to be staged at herprivate estate.
Stendhal is today probably the most highly regarded French novelist of the period, but he stands in a complex relation with Romanticism, and is notable for his penetrating psychological insight into his characters and his realism, qualities rarely prominent in Romantic fiction. As a survivor of the Frenchretreat from Moscow in 1812, fantasies of heroism and adventure had little appeal for him, and like Goya he is often seen as a forerunner of Realism. His most important works areLe Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) andLa Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839).
Romanticism in Poland is often taken to begin with the publication ofAdam Mickiewicz's first poems in 1822, and end with the crushing of theJanuary Uprising of 1863 against the Russians. It was strongly marked by interest in Polish history.[74] Polish Romanticism revived the old "Sarmatism" traditions of theszlachta or Polish nobility. Old traditions and customs were revived and portrayed in a positive light in the Polish messianic movement and in works of great Polish poets such as Adam Mickiewicz (Pan Tadeusz),Juliusz Słowacki andZygmunt Krasiński. This close connection between Polish Romanticism and Polish history became one of the defining qualities of the literature ofPolish Romanticism period, differentiating it from that of other countries. They had not suffered the loss of national statehood as was the case with Poland.[75] Influenced by the general spirit and main ideas of European Romanticism, the literature of Polish Romanticism is unique, as many scholars have pointed out, in having developed largely outside of Poland and in its emphatic focus upon the issue of Polishnationalism. The Polish intelligentsia, along with leading members of its government, left Poland in the early 1830s, during what is referred to as the "Great Emigration", resettling in France, Germany, Great Britain, Turkey, and the United States.
Their art featuredemotionalism andirrationality, fantasy and imagination, personality cults,folklore and country life, and the propagation of ideals of freedom. In the second period, many of thePolish Romantics worked abroad, often banished from Poland by the occupying powers due to their politically subversive ideas. Their work became increasingly dominated by the ideals of political struggle for freedom and their country'ssovereignty. Elements of mysticism became more prominent. There developed the idea of thepoeta wieszcz (the prophet). Thewieszcz (bard) functioned as spiritual leader to the nation fighting for its independence. The most notable poet so recognized wasAdam Mickiewicz.
Zygmunt Krasiński also wrote to inspire political and religious hope in his countrymen. Unlike his predecessors, who called for victory at whatever price in Poland's struggle against Russia, Krasinski emphasized Poland'sspiritual role in its fight for independence, advocating an intellectual rather than a military superiority. His works best exemplify theMessianic movement in Poland: in two early dramas,Nie-boska komedia (1835;The Undivine Comedy) andIrydion (1836;Iridion), as well as in the laterPsalmy przyszłości (1845), he asserted that Poland was theChrist of Europe: specifically chosen by God to carry the world's burdens, to suffer, and eventually be resurrected.
Influenced heavily by Lord Byron, Lermontov sought to explore the Romantic emphasis on metaphysical discontent with society and self, while Tyutchev's poems often described scenes of nature or passions of love. Tyutchev commonly operated with such categories as night and day, north and south, dream and reality, cosmos and chaos, and the still world of winter and spring teeming with life. Baratynsky's style was fairly classical in nature, dwelling on the models of the previous century.
There are scholars who consider Spanish Romanticism to be Proto-Existentialism because it is more anguished than the movement in other European countries. Foster et al., for example, say that the work of Spain's writers such as Espronceda, Larra, and other writers in the 19th century demonstrated a "metaphysical crisis".[80] These observers put more weight on the link between the 19th-century Spanish writers with the existentialist movement that emerged immediately after. According to Richard Caldwell, the writers that we now identify with Spain's romanticism were actually precursors to those who galvanized the literary movement that emerged in the 1920s.[81] This notion is the subject of debate for there are authors who stress that Spain's romanticism is one of the earliest in Europe,[82] while some assert that Spain really had no period of literary romanticism.[83] This controversy underscores a certain uniqueness to Spanish Romanticism in comparison to its European counterparts.
Portuguese poet, novelist, politician and playwrightAlmeida Garrett (1799–1854)
Romanticism began inPortugal with the publication of the poemCamões (1825), byAlmeida Garrett, who was raised by his uncle D. Alexandre, bishop ofAngra, in the precepts ofNeoclassicism, which can be observed in his early work. The author himself confesses (inCamões' preface) that he voluntarily refused to follow the principles of epic poetry enunciated byAristotle in hisPoetics, as he did the same toHorace'sArs Poetica. Almeida Garrett had participated in the1820 Liberal Revolution, which caused him to exile himself in England in 1823 and then in France, after theVila-Francada. While living in Great Britain, he had contacts with the Romantic movement and read authors such asShakespeare, Scott, Ossian, Byron, Hugo, Lamartine and de Staël, at the same time visiting feudal castles and ruins ofGothic churches and abbeys, which would be reflected in his writings. In 1838, he presentedUm Auto de Gil Vicente ("A Play byGil Vicente"), in an attempt to create a new national theatre, free of Greco-Roman and foreign influence. But his masterpiece would beFrei Luís de Sousa (1843), named by himself as a "Romantic drama" and it was acclaimed as an exceptional work, dealing with themes as national independence, faith, justice and love. He was also deeply interested in Portuguese folkloric verse, which resulted in the publication ofRomanceiro ("Traditional Portuguese Ballads") (1843), that recollect a great number of ancient popular ballads, known as "romances" or "rimances", inredondilha maior verse form, that contained stories ofchivalry, life ofsaints,crusades,courtly love, etc. He wrote the novelsViagens na Minha Terra,O Arco de Sant'Ana andHelena.[84][85][86]
Alexandre Herculano is, alongside Almeida Garrett, one of the founders of Portuguese Romanticism. He too was forced to exile to Great Britain and France because of hisliberal ideals. All of his poetry and prose are (unlike Almeida Garrett's) entirely Romantic, rejectingGreco-Roman myth and history. He sought inspiration in medieval Portuguese poems andchronicles as in theBible. His output is vast and covers many different genres, such as historical essays, poetry, novels, opuscules and theatre, where he brings back a whole world of Portuguese legends, tradition and history, especially inEurico, o Presbítero ("Eurico, the Priest") andLendas e Narrativas ("Legends and Narratives"). His work was influenced by Chateaubriand, Schiller,Klopstock, Walter Scott and the Old TestamentPsalms.[87]
António Feliciano de Castilho made the case forUltra-Romanticism, publishing the poemsA Noite no Castelo ("Night in the Castle") andOs Ciúmes do Bardo ("The Jealousy of the Bard"), both in 1836, and the dramaCamões. He became an unquestionable master for successive Ultra-Romantic generations, whose influence would not be challenged until the famous Coimbra Question. He also created polemics by translatingGoethe'sFaust without knowing German, but using French versions of the play. Other notable figures of Portuguese Romanticism are the famous novelistsCamilo Castelo Branco andJúlio Dinis, andSoares de Passos, Bulhão Pato and Pinheiro Chagas.[86]
Romanticism in Italian literature was a minor movement although some important works were produced; it began officially in 1816 whenGermaine de Staël wrote an article in the journalBiblioteca italiana called "Sulla maniera e l'utilità delle traduzioni", inviting Italian people to rejectNeoclassicism and to study new authors from other countries. Before that date,Ugo Foscolo had already published poems anticipating Romantic themes. The most important Romantic writers wereLudovico di Breme, Pietro Borsieri andGiovanni Berchet.[89] Better known authors such asAlessandro Manzoni andGiacomo Leopardi were influenced byEnlightenment as well as by Romanticism and Classicism.[90] An Italian romanticist writer who produced works in various genres, including short stories and novels (such asRicciarda o i Nurra e i Cabras), was the PiedmonteseGiuseppe Botero (1815–1885), devoting much of his career toSardinian literature.[91]
A print exemplifying the contrast between neoclassical vs. romantic styles of landscape and architecture (or the "Grecian" and the "Gothic" as they are termed here), 1816La vuelta del malón byÁngel Della Valle (1892)
Another important milestone in Argentine Romantic literature isAmalia byJosé Mármol, which is a love story set in the context of the Rosas' dictatorial regime.
Brazilian Romanticism is characterized and divided in three different periods. The first period is focused on the creation of a sense of national identity, using the ideal of the heroic Indian. Some examples includeJosé de Alencar, who wroteIracema andO Guarani, andGonçalves Dias, renowned by the poem "Canção do exílio" (Song of the Exile). The second period, sometimes calledUltra-Romanticism, is marked by a profound influence of European themes and traditions, involving the melancholy, sadness and despair related to unobtainable love. Goethe and Lord Byron are commonly quoted in these works. Some of the most notable authors of this phase areÁlvares de Azevedo,Casimiro de Abreu,Fagundes Varela andJunqueira Freire. The third period is marked by social poetry, especially the abolitionist movement, and it includesCastro Alves,Tobias Barreto andPedro Luís Pereira de Sousa.[93]
Dennis Malone Carter,Decatur Boarding the Tripolitan Gunboat, 1878. Romanticist vision of the Battle of Tripoli, during theFirst Barbary War. It represents the moment when the American war heroStephen Decatur was fighting hand-to-hand against the Muslim pirate captain.
The European Romantic movement reached America in the early 19th century. American Romanticism was just as multifaceted and individualistic as it was in Europe. Like the Europeans, the American Romantics demonstrated a high level of moral enthusiasm, commitment to individualism and the unfolding of the self, an emphasis on intuitive perception, and the assumption that the natural world was inherently good, while human society was filled with corruption.[94]
Romanticism became popular in American politics, philosophy and art. The movement appealed to the revolutionary spirit of America as well as to those longing to break free of the strict religious traditions of early settlement. The Romantics rejected rationalism and religious intellect. It appealed to those in opposition of Calvinism, which includes the belief that the destiny of each individual is preordained. The Romantic movement gave rise toNew EnglandTranscendentalism, which portrayed a less restrictive relationship between God and Universe. The new philosophy presented the individual with a more personal relationship with God. Transcendentalism and Romanticism appealed to Americans in a similar fashion, for both privileged feeling over reason, individual freedom of expression over the restraints of tradition and custom. It often involved a rapturous response to nature. It encouraged the rejection of harsh, rigid Calvinism, and promised a new blossoming of American culture.[94][95]
American Romanticism embraced the individual and rebelled against the confinement of neoclassicism and religious tradition. The Romantic movement in America created a new literary genre that continues to influence American writers. Novels, short stories, and poems replaced the sermons and manifestos of yore. Romantic literature was personal, intense, and portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical literature. America's preoccupation with freedom became a great source of motivation for Romantic writers as many were delighted in free expression and emotion without so much fear of ridicule and controversy. They also put more effort into the psychological development of their characters, and the main characters typically displayed extremes of sensitivity and excitement.[96]
The works of the Romantic era also differed from preceding works in that they spoke to a wider audience, partly reflecting the greater distribution of books as costs came down during the period.[34]
Romantic architecture appeared in the late 18th century in a reaction against the rigid forms ofneoclassical architecture. Romantic architecture reached its peak in the mid-19th century, and continued to appear until the end of the 19th century. It was designed to evoke an emotional reaction, either respect for tradition or nostalgia for a bucolic past. It was frequently inspired by the architecture of theMiddle Ages, especiallyGothic architecture, it was strongly influenced by romanticism in literature, particularly the historical novels ofVictor Hugo andWalter Scott. It sometimes moved into the domain ofeclecticism, with features assembled from different historic periods and regions of the world.[97]
Gothic Revival architecture was a popular variant of the romantic style, particularly in the construction of churches, Cathedrals, and university buildings. Notable examples include the completion ofCologne Cathedral in Germany, byKarl Friedrich Schinkel. The cathedral's construction began in 1248, but was halted in 1473. The original plans for the façade were discovered in 1840, and it was decided to recommence. Schinkel followed the original design as much as possible, but he also used modern construction technology, including an iron frame for the roof. The building was finished in 1880.[98]
In France, one of the earliest examples of romantic architecture is theHameau de la Reine, the small rustic hamlet created at thePalace of Versailles for QueenMarie Antoinette between 1783 and 1785 by the royal architectRichard Mique with the help of the romantic painterHubert Robert. It consisted of twelve structures, ten of which still exist, in the style of villages inNormandy. It was designed for the Queen and her friends to amuse themselves by playing at being peasants, and included a farmhouse with a dairy, a mill, a boudoir, a pigeon loft, a tower in the form of a lighthouse from which one could fish in the pond, a belvedere, a cascade and grotto, and a luxuriously furnished cottage with a billiard room for the Queen.[100]
French romantic architecture in the 19th century was strongly influenced by two writers;Victor Hugo, whose novelThe Hunchback of Notre Dame inspired a resurgence in interest in the Middle Ages; andProsper Mérimée, who wrote celebrated romantic novels and short stories and was also the first head of the commission of Historic Monuments in France, responsible for publicizing and restoring (and sometimes romanticizing) many French cathedrals and monuments desecrated and ruined after theFrench Revolution. His projects were carried out by the architectEugène Viollet-le-Duc. These included the restoration (sometimes creative) of the Cathedral ofNotre Dame de Paris, the fortified city ofCarcassonne, and the unfinished medievalChâteau de Pierrefonds.[98][101]
The romantic style continued in the second half of the 19th century. ThePalais Garnier, the Paris opera house designed byCharles Garnier was a highly romantic and eclectic combination of artistic styles. Another notable example of late 19th century romanticism is theBasilica of Sacré-Cœur byPaul Abadie, who drew upon the model ofByzantine architecture for his elongated domes (1875–1914).[99]
Thomas Jones,The Bard, 1774, a prophetic combination of Romanticism and nationalism by the Welsh artist
In the visual arts, Romanticism first showed itself inlandscape painting, where from as early as the 1760s British artists began to turn to wilder landscapes and storms, andGothic architecture, even if they had to make do withWales as a setting.Caspar David Friedrich andJ. M. W. Turner were born less than a year apart in 1774 and 1775 respectively and were to take German and English landscape painting to their extremes of Romanticism, but both their artistic sensibilities were formed when forms of Romanticism was already strongly present in art.John Constable, born in 1776, stayed closer to the English landscape tradition, but in his largest "six-footers" insisted on the heroic status of a patch of the working countryside where he had grown up—challenging the traditionalhierarchy of genres, which relegated landscape painting to a low status. Turner also painted very large landscapes, and above all, seascapes. Some of these large paintings had contemporary settings andstaffage, but others had small figures that turned the work intohistory painting in the manner ofClaude Lorrain, likeSalvator Rosa, alate Baroque artist whose landscapes had elements that Romantic painters repeatedly turned to. Friedrich often used single figures, or features like crosses, set alone amidst a huge landscape, "making them images of the transitoriness of human life and the premonition of death".[102]
Other groups of artists expressed feelings that verged on the mystical, many largely abandoning classical drawing and proportions. These includedWilliam Blake andSamuel Palmer and the other members ofthe Ancients in England, and in GermanyPhilipp Otto Runge. Like Friedrich, none of these artists had significant influence after their deaths for the rest of the 19th century, and were 20th-century rediscoveries from obscurity, though Blake was always known as a poet, and Norway's leading painterJohan Christian Dahl was heavily influenced by Friedrich. The Rome-basedNazarene movement of German artists, active from 1810, took a very different path, concentrating on medievalizing history paintings with religious and nationalist themes.[103]
The arrival of Romanticism in French art was delayed by the strong hold ofNeoclassicism on the academies, but from theNapoleonic period it became increasingly popular, initially in the form of history paintings propagandising for the new regime, of whichGirodet'sOssian receiving the Ghosts of the French Heroes, for Napoleon'sChâteau de Malmaison, was one of the earliest. Girodet's old teacherDavid was puzzled and disappointed by his pupil's direction, saying: "Either Girodet is mad or I no longer know anything of the art of painting".[104] A new generation of the French school,[105] developed personal Romantic styles, though still concentrating on history painting with a political message.Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) had his first success withThe Charging Chasseur, a heroic military figure derived fromRubens, at theParis Salon of 1812 in the years of the Empire, but his next major completed work,The Raft of the Medusa of 1818–19, remains the greatest achievement of the Romantic history painting, which in its day had a powerful anti-government message.
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) made his first Salon hits withThe Barque of Dante (1822),The Massacre at Chios (1824) andDeath of Sardanapalus (1827). The second was a scene from the Greek War of Independence, completed the year Byron died there, and the last was a scene from one of Byron's plays. With Shakespeare, Byron was to provide the subject matter for many other works of Delacroix, who also spent long periods in North Africa, painting colourful scenes of mounted Arab warriors. HisLiberty Leading the People (1830) remains, with theMedusa, one of the best-known works of French Romantic painting. Both reflected current events, and increasingly "history painting", literally "story painting", a phrase dating back to the Italian Renaissance meaning the painting of subjects with groups of figures, long considered the highest and most difficult form of art, did indeed become the painting of historical scenes, rather than those from religion or mythology.[106]
Francisco Goya was called "the last great painter in whose art thought and observation were balanced and combined to form a faultless unity".[107] But the extent to which he was a Romantic is a complex question. In Spain, there was still a struggle to introduce the values of theEnlightenment, in which Goya saw himself as a participant. The demonic and anti-rational monsters thrown up by his imagination are only superficially similar to those of the Gothic fantasies of northern Europe, and in many ways he remained wedded to the classicism and realism of his training, as well as looking forward to the Realism of the later 19th century.[108] But he, more than any other artist of the period, exemplified the Romantic values of the expression of the artist's feelings and his personal imaginative world.[109] He also shared with many of the Romantic painters a more free handling of paint, emphasized in the new prominence of the brushstroke andimpasto, which tended to be repressed in neoclassicism under a self-effacing finish.
Sculpture remained largely impervious to Romanticism, probably partly for technical reasons, as the most prestigious material of the day, marble, does not lend itself to expansive gestures. The leading sculptors in Europe,Antonio Canova andBertel Thorvaldsen, were both based in Rome and firm Neoclassicists, not at all tempted to allow influence from medieval sculpture, which would have been one possible approach to Romantic sculpture. When it did develop, true Romantic sculpture—with the exception of a few artists such asRudolf Maison[110]—rather oddly was missing in Germany, and mainly found in France, withFrançois Rude, best known from his group of the 1830s from theArc de Triomphe in Paris,David d'Angers, andAuguste Préault. Préault's plaster relief entitledSlaughter, which represented the horrors of wars with exacerbated passion, caused so much scandal at theSalon of 1834 that Préault was banned from this official annual exhibition for nearly twenty years.[111] In Italy, the most important Romantic sculptor wasLorenzo Bartolini.[112]
George Stubbs,A Lion Attacking a Horse (1770), oil on canvas, 38 in. x 49 1/2in.,Yale Center for British Art
In France, historical painting on idealized medieval and Renaissance themes is known as thestyle Troubadour, a term with no equivalent for other countries, though the same trends occurred there. Delacroix,Ingres andRichard Parkes Bonington all worked in this style, as did lesser specialists such asPierre-Henri Révoil (1776–1842) andFleury-François Richard (1777–1852). Their pictures are often small, and feature intimate private and anecdotal moments, as well as those of high drama. The lives of great artists such asRaphael were commemorated on equal terms with those of rulers, and fictional characters were also depicted. Fleury-Richard'sValentine of Milan weeping for the death of her husband, shown in theParis Salon of 1802, marked the arrival of the style, which lasted until the mid-century, before being subsumed into the increasingly academic history painting of artists likePaul Delaroche.[113]
Another trend was for very large apocalyptic history paintings, often combining extreme natural events, or divine wrath, with human disaster, attempting to outdoThe Raft of the Medusa, and now often drawing comparisons with effects from Hollywood. The leading English artist in the style wasJohn Martin, whose tiny figures were dwarfed by enormous earthquakes and storms, and worked his way through the biblical disasters, and those to come in thefinal days. Other works such as Delacroix'sDeath of Sardanapalus included larger figures, and these often drew heavily on earlier artists, especiallyPoussin andRubens, with extra emotionalism and special effects.
Elsewhere in Europe, leading artists adopted Romantic styles: in Russia there were the portraitistsOrest Kiprensky andVasily Tropinin, withIvan Aivazovsky specializing inmarine painting, and in NorwayHans Gude painted scenes offjords. In Poland,Piotr Michałowski (1800–1855) used a Romantic style in paintings particularly relating to the history ofNapoleonic Wars.[114] In ItalyFrancesco Hayez (1791–1882) was the leading artist of Romanticism in mid-19th-centuryMilan. His long, prolific and extremely successful career saw him begin as a Neoclassical painter, pass right through the Romantic period, and emerge at the other end as a sentimental painter of young women. His Romantic period included many historical pieces of "Troubadour" tendencies, but on a very large scale, that are heavily influenced byGian Battista Tiepolo and otherlate Baroque Italian masters.
Literary Romanticism had its counterpart in the American visual arts, most especially in the exaltation of an untamed Americanlandscape found in the paintings of theHudson River School. Painters likeThomas Cole,Albert Bierstadt andFrederic Edwin Church and others often expressed Romantic themes in their paintings. They sometimes depicted ancient ruins of the old world, such as in Fredric Edwin Church's pieceSunrise in Syria. These works reflected the Gothic feelings of death and decay. They also show the Romantic ideal that Nature is powerful and will eventually overcome the transient creations of men. More often, they worked to distinguish themselves from their European counterparts by depicting uniquely American scenes and landscapes. This idea of an American identity in the art world is reflected inW. C. Bryant's poemTo Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe, where Bryant encourages Cole to remember the powerful scenes that can only be found in America.
Some American paintings (such as Albert Bierstadt'sThe Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak) promote the literary idea of the "noble savage" by portraying idealized Native Americans living in harmony with the natural world. Thomas Cole's paintings tend towardsallegory, explicit inThe Voyage of Life series painted in the early 1840s, showing the stages of life set amidst an awesome and immense nature.
The term "Romanticism" when applied to music has come to imply the period roughly from 1800 until 1850, or else until around 1900. Musical Romanticism is predominantly a German phenomenon—so much so that one respected French reference work defines it entirely in terms of "The role of music in the aesthetics of German romanticism".[115] Another French encyclopedia holds that the German temperament generally "can be described as the deep and diverse action of romanticism on German musicians", and that there is only one true representative of Romanticism in French music,Hector Berlioz, while in Italy, the sole great name of musical Romanticism isGiuseppe Verdi, "a sort of[Victor] Hugo of opera, gifted with a real genius for dramatic effect". Similarly, in his analysis of Romanticism and its pursuit of harmony,Henri Lefebvre posits that, "But of course, German romanticism was more closely linked to music than French romanticism was, so it is there we should look for the direct expression of harmony as the central romantic idea."[116] Nevertheless, the huge popularity of German Romantic music led, "whether by imitation or by reaction", to an often nationalistically inspired vogue amongst Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Czech, and Scandinavian musicians, successful "perhaps more because of its extra-musical traits than for the actual value of musical works by its masters".[117]
In the contemporary music culture, the romantic musician followed a public career depending on sensitive middle-class audiences rather than on a courtly patron, as had been the case with earlier musicians and composers. Public persona characterized a new generation of virtuosi who made their way as soloists, epitomized in the concert tours ofPaganini andLiszt, and the conductor began to emerge as an important figure, on whose skill the interpretation of the increasingly complex music depended.[118]
Although the term "Romanticism" when applied to music has come to imply the period roughly from 1800 until 1850, or else until around 1900, the contemporary application of "romantic" to music did not coincide with this modern interpretation. Indeed, one of the earliest sustained applications of the term to music occurs in 1789, in theMémoires ofAndré Grétry.[119] This is of particular interest because it is a French source on a subject mainly dominated by Germans, but also because it explicitly acknowledges its debt toJean-Jacques Rousseau (himself a composer, amongst other things) and, by so doing, establishes a link to one of the major influences on the Romantic movement generally.[120] In 1810E. T. A. Hoffmann namedHaydn,Mozart, andBeethoven as "the three masters of instrumental compositions" who "breathe one and the same romantic spirit". He justified his view on the basis of these composers' depth of evocative expression and their marked individuality. In Haydn's music, according to Hoffmann, "a child-like, serene disposition prevails", while Mozart (in the lateE-flat major Symphony, for example) "leads us into the depths of the spiritual world", with elements of fear, love, and sorrow, "a presentiment of the infinite ... in the eternal dance of the spheres". Beethoven's music, on the other hand, conveys a sense of "the monstrous and immeasurable", with the pain of an endless longing that "will burst our breasts in a fully coherent concord of all the passions".[121] This elevation in the valuation of pure emotion resulted in the promotion of music from the subordinate position it had held in relation to the verbal and plastic arts during the Enlightenment. Because music was considered to be free of the constraints of reason, imagery, or any other precise concept, it came to be regarded, first in the writings ofWackenroder andTieck and later by writers such asSchelling andWagner, as preeminent among the arts, the one best able to express the secrets of the universe, to evoke the spirit world, infinity, and the absolute.[122]
This chronologic agreement of musical and literary Romanticism continued as far as the middle of the 19th century, whenRichard Wagner denigrated the music ofMeyerbeer andBerlioz as "neoromantic": "The Opera, to which we shall now return, has swallowed down the Neoromanticism of Berlioz, too, as a plump, fine-flavoured oyster, whose digestion has conferred on it anew a brisk and well-to-do appearance."[123]
It was only toward the end of the 19th century that the newly emergent discipline ofMusikwissenschaft (musicology)—itself a product of the historicizing proclivity of the age—attempted a more scientificperiodization of music history, and a distinction betweenViennese Classical and Romantic periods was proposed. The key figure in this trend wasGuido Adler, who viewed Beethoven andFranz Schubert as transitional but essentially Classical composers, with Romanticism achieving full maturity only in the post-Beethoven generation of Frédéric Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn,Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz andFranz Liszt. From Adler's viewpoint, found in books likeDer Stil in der Musik (1911), composers of theNew German School and various late-19th-centurynationalist composers were not Romantics but "moderns" or "realists" (by analogy with the fields of painting and literature), and this schema remained prevalent through the first decades of the 20th century.[120]
By the second quarter of the 20th century, an awareness that radical changes in musical syntax had occurred during the early 1900s caused another shift in historical viewpoint, and the change of century came to be seen as marking a decisive break with the musical past. This in turn led historians such asAlfred Einstein[124] to extend the musical "Romantic era" throughout the 19th century and into the first decade of the 20th. It has continued to be referred to as such in some of the standard music references such asThe Oxford Companion to Music[125] andGrout'sHistory of Western Music[126] but was not unchallenged. For example, the prominent German musicologistFriedrich Blume, the chief editor of the first edition ofDie Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1949–86), accepted the earlier position that Classicism and Romanticism together constitute a single period beginning in the middle of the 18th century, but at the same time held that it continued into the 20th century, including such pre-World War II developments asexpressionism andneoclassicism.[127] This is reflected in some notable recent reference works such as theNew Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians[120] and the new edition ofMusik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.[128]
The Romantic movement affected most aspects of intellectual life, andRomanticism and science had a powerful connection, especially in the period 1800–1840. Many scientists were influenced by versions of theNaturphilosophie ofJohann Gottlieb Fichte,Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling andGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and others, and without abandoningempiricism, sought in their work to uncover what they tended to believe was a unified and organic Nature. The English scientist SirHumphry Davy, a prominent Romantic thinker, said that understanding nature required "an attitude of admiration, love and worship, [...] a personal response".[129] He believed that knowledge was only attainable by those who truly appreciated and respected nature. Self-understanding was an important aspect of Romanticism. It had less to do with proving that man was capable of understanding nature (through his budding intellect) and therefore controlling it, and more to do with the emotional appeal of connecting himself with nature and understanding it through a harmonious co-existence.[130]
History writing was very strongly, and many would say harmfully, influenced by Romanticism.[131] In England,Thomas Carlyle was a highly influential essayist who turned historian; he both invented and exemplified the phrase "hero-worship",[132] lavishing largely uncritical praise on strong leaders such asOliver Cromwell,Frederick the Great andNapoleon. Romantic nationalism had a largely negative effect on the writing of history in the 19th century, as each nation tended toproduce its own version of history, and the critical attitude, even cynicism, of earlier historians was often replaced by a tendency to create romantic stories with clearly distinguished heroes and villains.[133] Nationalist ideology of the period placed great emphasis on racial coherence, and the antiquity of peoples, and tended to vastly overemphasize the continuity between past periods and the present, leading tonational mysticism. Much historical effort in the 20th century was devoted to combating the romantic historical myths created in the 19th century.
To insulate theology fromscientism orreductionism in science, 19th-century post-Enlightenment German theologians developed a modernist or so-calledliberal conception of Christianity, led byFriedrich Schleiermacher andAlbrecht Ritschl. They took the Romantic approach of rooting religion in the inner world of the human spirit, so that it is a person's feeling or sensibility about spiritual matters that comprises religion.[134]
Romantic chess was the style ofchess which emphasized quick, tactical maneuvers characterized by aesthetic beauty rather than long-term strategic planning, which was considered to be of secondary importance.[135] The Romantic era in chess is generally considered to have begun around the 18th century (although a primarily tactical style of chess was predominant even earlier),[136] and to have reached its peak with Joseph MacDonnell and Pierre LaBourdonnais, the two dominant chess players in the 1830s. The 1840s were dominated byHoward Staunton, and other leading players of the era includedAdolf Anderssen,Daniel Harrwitz,Henry Bird,Louis Paulsen, andPaul Morphy. The "Immortal Game", played by Anderssen andLionel Kieseritzky on21 June 1851 in London—where Anderssen made boldsacrifices to secure victory, giving up bothrooks and a bishop, then hisqueen, and thencheckmating his opponent with his three remainingminor pieces—is considered a supreme example of Romantic chess.[137] The end of the Romantic era in chess is considered to be the1873 Vienna Tournament whereWilhelm Steinitz popularized positional play and the closed game.
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 ofnational languages andfolklore, and the importance of local customs and traditions, to the movements that would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls forself-determination of nationalities, nationalism was one of the key vehicles of Romanticism, its role, expression and meaning. One of the most important functions of medieval references in the 19th century was nationalist. Popular and epic poetry were its workhorses. This is visible in Germany and Ireland, where underlying Germanic or Celticlinguistic substrates dating from before the Romanization-Latinization were sought out.
Early Romantic nationalism was strongly inspired by Rousseau, and by the ideas ofJohann Gottfried von Herder, who in 1784 argued that the geography formed the natural economy of a people, and shaped their customs and society.[138]
The nature of nationalism changed dramatically, however, after theFrench Revolution with the rise ofNapoleon, 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 theFrench Republic becameNapoleon's Empire, Napoleon became not the inspiration for nationalism, but the object of its struggle. InPrussia, the development of spiritual renewal as a means to engage inthe struggle against Napoleon was argued by, among others,Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a disciple ofKant. The wordVolkstum, 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.[139]
This view of nationalism inspired the collection offolklore by such people as theBrothers Grimm, the revival of old epics as national, and the construction of new epics as if they were old, as in theKalevala, compiled from Finnish tales and folklore, orOssian, 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 byCharles Perrault, which they thought proved they were not truly German tales;[140]Sleeping Beauty survived in their collection because the tale ofBrynhildr convinced them that the figure of the sleeping princess was authentically German.Vuk Karadžić contributed toSerbian folk literature, using peasant culture as the foundation. He regarded the oral literature of the peasants as an integral part of Serbian culture, compiling it to use in his collections of folk songs, tales and proverbs, as well as the first dictionary of vernacular Serbian.[141] Similar projects were undertaken by the RussianAlexander Afanasyev, the NorwegiansPeter Christen Asbjørnsen andJørgen Moe, and the EnglishmanJoseph Jacobs.[142]
Romanticism played an essential role in the national awakening of many Central European peoples lacking their own national states, not least in Poland, which had recently failed to restore its independence whenRussia's army crushed thePolish Uprising underNicholas I. Revival and reinterpretation of ancient myths, customs and traditions by Romantic poets and painters helped to distinguish their indigenous cultures from those of the dominant nations and crystallise the mythography ofRomantic nationalism. Patriotism, nationalism, revolution and armed struggle for independence also became popular themes in the arts of this period. Arguably, the most distinguished Romantic poet of this part of Europe wasAdam Mickiewicz, who developed an idea thatPoland was the Messiah of Nations, predestined to suffer just asJesus had suffered to save all the people. The Polish self-image as a "Christ among nations" or the martyr of Europe can be traced back to its history ofChristendom and suffering under invasions. During the periods of foreign occupation, the Catholic Church served as bastion of Poland's national identity and language, and the major promoter ofPolish culture. Thepartitions came to be seen in Poland as a Polish sacrifice for the security forWestern civilization. Adam Mickiewicz wrote the patriotic dramaDziady (directed against the Russians), where he depicts Poland as the Christ of Nations. He also wrote "Verily I say unto you, it is not for you to learn civilization from foreigners, but it is you who are to teach them civilization ... You are among the foreigners like the Apostles among the idolaters". InBooks of the Polish Nation and Polish Pilgrimage Mickiewicz detailed his vision of Poland as a Messias and a Christ of Nations, that would save mankind. Dziady is known for various interpretation. The most known ones are the moral aspect of part II,individualist and romantic message of part IV, as well as deeply patriotic, messianistic and Christian vision in part III of the poem. Zdzisław Kępiński, however, focuses his interpretation onSlavic pagan andoccult elements found in the drama. In his bookMickiewicz hermetyczny he writes abouthermetic,theosophic andalchemical philosophy on the book as well asMasonic symbols.
^David Levin,History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, and Parkman (1967)
^Gerald Lee Gutek,A history of the Western educational experience (1987) ch. 12 onJohann Heinrich Pestalozzi
^Ashton Nichols, "Roaring Alligators and Burning Tygers: Poetry and Science from William Bartram to Charles Darwin",Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 2005 149(3): 304–15
^Coleman, Jon T. (2020).Nature Shock: Getting Lost in America. Yale University Press. p. 214.ISBN978-0-300-22714-7.
^Barnes, Barbara A. (2006).Global Extremes: Spectacles of Wilderness Adventure, Endless Frontiers, and American Dreams. Santa Cruz: University of California Press. p. 51.
^Ruthven (2001) p. 40 quote: "Romantic ideology of literary authorship, which conceives of the text as an autonomous object produced by an individual genius."
^Spearing (1987) quote: "Surprising as it may seem to us, living after the Romantic movement has transformed older ideas about literature, in the Middle Ages authority was prized more highly than originality."
^Eco (1994) p. 95 quote:Much art has been and is repetitive. The concept of absolute originality is a contemporary one, born with Romanticism; classical art was in vast measure serial, and the "modern" avant-garde (at the beginning of this century) challenged the Romantic idea of "creation from nothingness", with its techniques of collage, mustachios on the Mona Lisa, art about art, and so on.
^Waterhouse (1926), throughout; Smith (1924); Millen, JessicaRomantic Creativity and the Ideal of Originality: A Contextual Analysis, inCross-sections, The Bruce Hall Academic Journal – Volume VI, 2010 PDFArchived 2016-03-14 at theWayback Machine; Forest Pyle, The Ideology of Imagination: Subject and Society in the Discourse of Romanticism (Stanford University Press, 1995) p. 28.
^Breckman, Warren (2008).European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents. Rogers D. Spotswood Collection. (1st ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.ISBN978-0-312-45023-6.OCLC148859077.
^Athenaeum. Bey F. Vieweg dem Älteren. 1800. p. 122.Ich habe ein bestimmtes Merkmahl des Gegensatzes zwischen dem Antiken und dem Romantischen aufgestellt. Indessen bitte ich Sie doch, nun nicht sogleich anzunehmen, daß mir das Romantische und das Moderne völlig gleich gelte. Ich denke es ist etwa ebenso verschieden, wie die Gemählde des Raphael und Correggio von den Kupferstichen die jetzt Mode sind. Wollen Sie sich den Unterschied völlig klar machen, so lesen Sie gefälligst etwa die Emilia Galotti die so unaussprechlich modern und doch im geringsten nicht romantisch ist, und erinnern sich dann an Shakspeare, in den ich das eigentliche Zentrum, den Kern der romantischen Fantasie setzen möchte. Da suche und finde ich das Romantische, bey den ältern Modernen, bey Shakspeare, Cervantes, in der italiänischen Poesie, in jenem Zeitalter der Ritter, der Liebe und der Mährchen, aus welchem die Sache und das Wort selbst herstammt. Dieses ist bis jetzt das einzige, was einen Gegensatz zu den classischen Dichtungen des Alterthums abgeben kann; nur diese ewig frischen Blüthen der Fantasie sind würdig die alten Götterbilder zu umkränzen. Und gewiß ist es, daß alles Vorzüglichste der modernen Poesie dem Geist und selbst der Art nach dahinneigt; es müßte denn eine Rückkehr zum Antiken seyn sollen. Wie unsre Dichtkunst mit dem Roman, so fing die der Griechen mit dem Epos an und löste sich wieder darin auf.
^abGreenblatt et al.,Norton Anthology of English Literature, eighth edition, "The Romantic Period – Volume D" (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2006):[page needed]
^Day, 1–3; the arch-conservative and Romantic isJoseph de Maistre, but many Romantics swung from youthful radicalism to conservative views in middle age, for example Wordsworth.Samuel Palmer's only published text was a short piece opposing theRepeal of the corn laws.
^Darrin M. McMahon, "The Counter-Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France"Past and Present No. 159 (May 1998:77–112) p. 79 note 7.
^Sutherland, James (1958)English SatireArchived 2022-12-04 at theWayback Machine p. 1. There were a few exceptions, notably Byron, who integrated satire into some of his greatest works, yet shared much in common with his Romantic contemporaries. Bloom, p. 18.
^John Keats. By Sidney Colvin, p. 106. Elibron Classics
^Thomas Chatterton, Grevel Lindop, 1972, Fyffield Books, p. 11
^Or at least he tried to; Kean played the tragic Lear for a few performances. They were not well received, and with regret, he reverted toNahum Tate's version with a comic ending, which had been standard since 1689. SeeStanley Wells, "Introduction" fromKing Lear, Oxford University Press (2000), p. 69.
^J. Buchan,Crowded with Genius (London: Harper Collins, 2003),ISBN0-06-055888-1, p. 311.
^J. Buchan,Crowded with Genius (London: Harper Collins, 2003),ISBN0-06-055888-1, p. 163.
^H. Gaskill,The Reception of Ossian in Europe (Continuum, 2004),ISBN0-8264-6135-2, p. 140.
^D. Thomson,The Gaelic Sources of Macpherson's "Ossian" (Aberdeen: Oliver & Boyd, 1952).
^L. McIlvanney, "Hugh Blair, Robert Burns, and the Invention of Scottish Literature",Eighteenth-Century Life, vol. 29 (2), Spring 2005, pp. 25–46.
^K. S. Whetter,Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008),ISBN0-7546-6142-3, p. 28.
^N. Davidson,The Origins of Scottish Nationhood (Pluto Press, 2008),ISBN0-7453-1608-5, p. 136.
^A. Maunder,FOF Companion to the British Short Story (Infobase Publishing, 2007),ISBN0-8160-7496-8, p. 374.
^A. Jarrels, "'Associations respect[ing] the past': Enlightenment and Romantic historicism", in J. P. Klancher,A Concise Companion to the Romantic Age (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2009),ISBN0-631-23355-5, p. 60.
^A. Benchimol, ed.,Intellectual Politics and Cultural Conflict in the Romantic Period: Scottish Whigs, English Radicals and the Making of the British Public Sphere (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010),ISBN0-7546-6446-5, p. 210.
^A. Benchimol, ed.,Intellectual Politics and Cultural Conflict in the Romantic Period: Scottish Whigs, English Radicals and the Making of the British Public Sphere (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010),ISBN0-7546-6446-5, p. 209.
^I. Brown,The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature: Enlightenment, Britain and Empire (1707–1918) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007),ISBN0-7486-2481-3, pp. 229–30.
^Philip W. Silver,Ruin and restitution: reinterpreting romanticism in Spain (1997) p. 13
^Gerald Brenan,The literature of the Spanish people: from Roman times to the present (1965) p. 364
^Foster, David; Altamiranda, Daniel; de Urioste, Carmen (2001).Spanish Literature : Current debates on Hispanism. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. p. 78.ISBN978-0-8153-3563-4.
^abcSaraiva, António José; Lopes, Oscar (1996).História da literatura portuguesa (17a ed.). Porto, Portugal: Porto Editora.ISBN978-972-0-30170-3.OCLC35124986.
^Gaetana Marrone, Paolo Puppa,Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies: A–J,Taylor & Francis, 2007, p. 1242
^Garofalo, Piero (2005). "Italian Romanticisms". In Ferber, Michael (ed.).Companion to European Romanticism. London: Blackwell. pp. 238–255.
^La nuova enciclopedia della letteratura. Milan: Garzanti. 1985. p. 829.
^Marci, Giuseppe (December 2013).Scrittori Sardi (in Italian). Autonomous Region of Sardinia, Italy: Center for Sardinian Philological Studies / CUEC. p. 183.ISBN978-88-8467-859-1.Archived from the original on 19 March 2022. Retrieved14 July 2022.
^Roberto González Echevarría and Enrique Pupo-Walker,The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature: Brazilian Literature (1996) vol. 2 p. 367
^abGeorge L. McMichael and Frederick C. Crews, eds.Anthology of American Literature: Colonial through romantic (6th ed. 1997) p. 613
^"Romanticism, American", inThe Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists ed by Ann Lee Morgan (Oxford University Press, 2007)onlineArchived 2020-07-28 at theWayback Machine
^The relationship of the American poet Wallace Stevens to Romanticism is raised in the poem "Another Weeping Woman" and its commentary.
^Weber, Patrick,Histoire de l'Architecture (2008), p. 63
^abWeber, Patrick,Histoire de l'Architecture (2008), pp. 64
^abWeber, Patrick,Histoire de l'Architecture (2008), pp. 64–65
^Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed.Romanticism and the Sciences, p. 15.
^Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed.Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 1790–1840, p.xiv; Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed.Romanticism and the Sciences, p. 2.
^Hayes, Carlton (July 1927). "Contributions of Herder to the Doctrine of Nationalism".The American Historical Review.32 (4):722–723.doi:10.2307/1837852.JSTOR1837852.
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