1. The Romantic Period

2. Romanticism?

3. EWW. NO!

4. American Romanticism (review)
Edgar Alan Poe
Herman Melville
Emily Dickinson
Walt Whitman
Henry David Thoreau
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Washington Irving

5. Romanticism From Science and Reason to Emotion and the Inner Self
Previously: Satire and bitterness: berating the power of human understanding
As to say “Humanity is Unreasonable”
Attitudes redefined
“our meddling intellect / Misshapes the beauteous forms of things-- / We murder to dissect”

6. From Enlightenment to Romanticism
French Revolution
Industrial Revolution
Revolutions &
Rise of Nationalism
Enlightenment Ideas
Reason
Universal Truths
Natural Order
Academics
Classical
(Think Mock Epic!)
Romantic Ideas
Love of Nature
• Idealization of Rural Living
• Faith in Common People
• Emphasis on Freedom and
Individualism • Spontaneity, intuition, feeling,
imagination, wonder

7. From Enlightenment to Romanticism
Descartes: “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I exist.)
Rousseau: “Exister, pour nous, c’est sentir” (For us, to exist is to feel.)
Romanticism as a reaction to:
The Age of Reason
The Industrial Revolution
The French Revolution

8. Romanticism & The Industrial Revolution
What might be some
negative effects of The
Industrial Revolution?

9. Romanticism & The French Revolution
- French emotional reaction
- Middle class dominance
- Underclass causes adopted
Frustration of common
people from lack of political
and economic agency
Out of this revolution comes…
Freedom
Nationalism
Individualism

10. The Massacre of Peterloo
England- 1819
Poor Economy
Lack of Suffrage
Bad Working
Conditions
15 Killed,
Injured
he Peterloo Massacre (or Battle of Peterloo) occurred at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 gathered at a meeting to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.
The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 had resulted in periods of famine and chronic unemployment, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws. By the beginning of 1819 the pressure generated by poor economic conditions, coupled with the lack of suffrage in northern England, had enhanced the appeal of political radicalism. In response, the Manchester Patriotic Union, a group agitating for parliamentary reform, organised a demonstration to be addressed by the well-known radical orator Henry Hunt.
Shortly after the meeting began, local magistrates called on the military authorities to arrest Hunt and several others on the hustings with him, and to disperse the crowd. Cavalry charged into the crowd with sabres drawn, and in the ensuing confusion, 15 people were killed and 400–700 were injured. The massacre was given the name Peterloo in ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo, which had taken place four years earlier.
Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre one of the defining moments of its age. In its own time, the London and national papers shared the horror felt in the Manchester region, but Peterloo's immediate effect was to cause the government to crack down on reform, with the passing of what became known as the Six Acts. It also led directly to the foundation of The Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian), but had little other effect on the pace of reform. Peterloo is commemorated by a plaque close to the site, which has been criticised as being inadequate. In a survey conducted by The Guardian in 2006, Peterloo came second to the Putney Debates as the event from British history that most deserved a proper monument or a memorial.
"Down with ‘em! Chop ‘em down my brave boys: give them no quarter they want to take our Beef & Pudding from us! ---- & remember the more you kill the less poor rates you'll have to pay so go at it Lads show your courage & your Loyalty!"

11. Defining Romanticism
Romanticism refers to a movement in art, literature, and music during the 19th century.
Romanticism is broadly characterized by:
Imagination
Emotion
Inspiration
Individuality

12. Imagination Imagination was emphasized over “reason.”
This was a backlash against the rationalism characterized by the Neoclassical “Age of Reason.”
Imagination was considered necessary for creating all art.
British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it “intellectual intuition.”

13. Emotion Romantics placed value on feeling and instincts over reason.
Emotions were important in Romantic art.
British Romantic William Wordsworth described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

14. Inspiration
The Romantic artist, musician, or writer, is an “inspired creator” rather than a “technical master.”
Romantic writers were “going with the flow,” or being spontaneous, rather than “getting it precise” like Milton, Pope, John Donne.

15. Individuality Romantics celebrated the individual.
Triumph of common man in French Revolution.
Women’s Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as major movements.
Walt Whitman, an American Romantic writer, wrote a lengthy poem entitled “Song of Myself”; it begins, “I celebrate myself…”

16. Romanticism
The Visual Arts
&
Literature

17. Visual Arts: Summary
Romantic art was emotional, deeply-felt, individualistic, and exotic. It has been described as a reaction to earlier styles (neoclassical art).
Conveyed personal feeling of artist.
Glorified the common man.
Depicted the exotic (subjects).
Landscapes/Nature became important.
Earlier art (neoclassical art) was rigid, severe, and unemotional.
Follows strict classical rules from ancient Greece and Rome… proportions, symmetry… simplicity

18. Visual Arts: Examples Romantic Art
The Death of Marat (French: La Mort de Marat ) is a 1793 painting in the Neoclassic style by Jacques-Louis David and is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. This work refers to the assassination of radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat, killed on the 13th of July 1793 by Charlotte Corday, a French Revolutionary figure from a minor aristocratic family. Corday, who blamed Marat for the September Massacres and feared an all out civil war, claimed "I killed one man to save 100,000."
Romantic Art
Neoclassical Art
Death of Marat
How are these two pieces of art different?
What words best describe these paintings?

19. appear in this painting?
Romantic Art
How does Nature
appear in this painting?
The subject of the painting is the practice of 18th century slave traders who would throw the dead and dying human 'cargo' overboard during the middle passage in the Atlantic Ocean in order that they might claim the insurance for 'drowning'.
Turner’s The Slave Ship

20. Bottom Right Detail

21. Bottom Center Detail

22. What does this painting say about individualism and the common man?
Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People

23. This painting depicts an
1808 shooting at Montana
del Principe Pio. Can you tell
Goya’s reaction to the event?
What features indicate
his reaction?

24. Romantic Literature
The publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 is considered the beginning of literary Romanticism.

25. “[Romanticism] must have come on like punk rock to a public groaning under the weight of over-cooked Augustinisms.”
“They said, we'd be artistically free
When we signed that bit of paper.”
-The Clash
How can Romanticism be seen
as a rebellion against The System,
The Man, The Accepted?
Augustinisms = classical, religious commentary from Augustine.

26. What is the relationship between Romantic
Romantic Literature
Relationship with Nature “Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part Of me and my soul, as I of them?” - Byron “[A mountain is] the type of a majestic intellect, There I beheld the emblem of a giant mind that feeds upon infinity.” - Wordsworth
What is the relationship between Romantic
Artists and nature?

27. Romantic Literature What do Romantic Artists think about the
“Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low? Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear? Wherefore, Bees of England, forge Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, Sow seed,-- but let no tyrant reap; Find wealth,--let no imposter heap” - Shelley
What do Romantic Artists think about the
Common Man and Individuality?

28. Romanticism Affected Effects Visual Arts Literature
Increase in nationalism (expansion!!! 2nd British Empire etc)
Increase in individualism (French Revolutions, rise in freedom, rise of the common man)

29. Ignoring the “love element” for a moment…
What makes this line romantic?
My love for you is like a red, red, rose