1. A Movement Across the Arts
Romanticism
A Movement Across the Arts

3. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
FASCINATION WITH YOUTH AND INNOCENCE
QUESTIONING AUTHORITY AND TRADITION AND REBELLING AGAINST UNJUST AUTHORITY
DEVELOPING AN AWARENESS OF ADAPTING TO CHANGE
FASCINATION WITH NATURE

4. Definition
Romanticism refers to a movement in art, literature, and music during the 19th century.
Romanticism is characterized by the 5 “I”s
Imagination
Intuition
Idealism
Inspiration
Individuality

5. Imagination Imagination was emphasized over “reason.”
This was a backlash against the rationalism characterized by the Neoclassical period or “Age of Reason.”
Imagination was considered necessary for creating all art.

6. Intuition
Romantics placed value on “intuition,” or feeling and instincts, over reason.
Emotions were important in Romantic art.
British Romantic William Wordsworth described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
Writers also focused on “inner dreams” and personal experiences.

7. Idealism
Idealism is the concept that we can make the world a better place.
Idealism refers to any theory that emphasizes the spirit over matter – a crucial role in making the world the way it is.
Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time.

8. Inspiration
The Romantic artist, musician, or writer, is an “inspired creator” rather than a “technical master.”
What this means is “going with the moment” or being spontaneous, rather than “getting it precise.”

9. Individuality Romantics celebrated the individual.
During this time period, Women’s Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as major movements.
Walt Whitman, a later Romantic writer, would write a poem entitled “Song of Myself”: it begins, “I celebrate myself…”

10. Origins
Romanticism began to take root as a movement following the French Revolution in 1789.
The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1792 is considered the beginning of literary Romanticism.
At this time England changed from an agricultural to an industrial nation.

11. Origins, Part Dos Major poets of the Romantic Era include
William Blake
William Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Keats
George Gordon (Lord Byron)

12. Origins, Part Tres During the Industrial Revolution
Goods were mass-produced in factories.
Communal farms were turned over to private owners.
System of laissez faire—”let people do what they please” without government interference
The rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
Children suffered —especially because of poor working conditions

13. The Arts
Romanticism was a movement across all the arts: visual art, music, and literature.
All of the arts embraced motifs prevalent in the Middle Ages: chivalry, courtly love. Literature and art from this time depicted these motifs and music (ballets and operas) illustrated these motifs.
Shakespeare came back into vogue.

14. Visual Arts
Neoclassical art was rigid, severe, and unemotional; it hearkened back to ancient Greece and Rome
Romantic art was emotional, deeply-felt, individualistic, and exotic. It has been described as a reaction to Neoclassicism, or “anti-Classicism.”

15. Visual Arts: Examples
Romantic Art
Neoclassical Art

16. Music
“Classical” musicians included composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Josef Haydn.
Romantic musicians included composers like Frederic Chopin, Franz Lizst, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky

17. Music: Components
Classical music emphasized internal order and balance.
Romantic music emphasized expression of feelings.

18. Subjects of Poetry Common, ordinary objects
Writers explored the beauty of nature.
Writers wrote about the power of the human imagination.
Writers explored feelings of ordinary people and the power of the human heart.
Writers believed God was in nature.

19. Types of Poems
Apostrophe—A poem in which a speaker talks directly to an absent or dead person as if that person is there
Ballad—A poem with a regular pattern or rhythm and a refrain that tells a complete story
Blank Verse—Poetry with a regular rhythm but no rhyme
Lyric—Poetry that focuses on emotions rather than logic