1. Romanticism
The Romantic Age:

2. The Romantic age
An artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe.
A reaction against:
The Industrial Revolution (transition to new manufacturing processes (machines, factories, etc.)
The Enlightenment (dramatic revolutions in science, philosophy, politics, etc. swept away the medieval world-view.)
Neoclassicism

3. Neoclassicism vs. romanticism
Reason
Order
Balance
Objectivity
Industrial
Formal
Society
Structure
Symmetry
Romanticism:
Emotion
Spontaneity
Individual
Subjectivity
Nature
Informal
Untamed
Imagination
Supernatural

4. The romantic age Belief that reason cannot explain everything.
Example: The Enlightenment thinkers condemned the Middles Ages as “Dark Ages”, a period of ignorance and irrationality. The Romantics, on the other hand, idealized the Middle Ages as a time of spiritual depth and adventure.
The Romantic Age influenced all art forms in Europe (music, painting, etc.) but poetry especially flourished during this time.

5. LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD
Featured an intense interest in “common people”.
Writers had a deep attachment to nature and to a pure, simple past.
Response to what they perceived as the misery and ugliness born of industrialization.
Distrust of civilization and “city life”.
Rejected industrialization and the faith in science and reason that had previously characterized 18th century literature.

6. Literature of the period
Emphasis on deep, powerful emotions (intuition and imagination over reason)
Concern for individual freedom/Celebration of the individual
Desire for self-fulfillment and freedom from the conformity of civilization.
Women’s rights and abolitionism were taking root as major movements.
Interest in the supernatural
Cannot be explained through logic or reason.
Requires readers to willingly “suspend their beliefs”.

7. Romantic themes: The five I’s
Intuition & Imagination
Intense emotions and instincts are necessary to creating all art.
Idealism
The concept that we can make the world a better place.
Inspiration
Being spontaneous is more important than being precise.
Individuality
Celebrate being an individual.

8. Romantic themes Example: Love of nature Interest in the supernatural
When you were walking down a path, you came to a fork in the road. Standing there, you couldn’t decide which path to choose: the path to the left or the path to the right. As you were pondering, a rabbit jumped out of a bush and hopped down the left path. If you were a Romantic, you would interpret this as God telling you to take the left path.
Love of nature
Interest in the supernatural
Intuition over reason

9. Romantic poets William Blake Percy Bysshe Shelley
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
George Gordon, Lord Byron
William Wordsworth
John Keats

10. Romantic writers John Keats “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein
Percy Shelley “Ozymandias”
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass
Edgar Allan Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Samuel Coleridge Kubla Khan
Herman Melville Moby Dick
Emily Dickinson “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
Washington Irving The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

11. Neoclassical or romantic?

12. Neoclassical or romantic?

13. Neoclassical or romantic?