Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era)
was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual
movement that originated in Europe toward
the end of the 18th century, and in most areas
was at its peak in the approximate period
from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized
by its emphasis on emotion and individualism
as well as glorification of all the past and
nature, preferring the medieval rather than
the classical. It was partly a reaction to
the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic
social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment,
and the scientific rationalization of nature—all
components of modernity. It was embodied most
strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature,
but had a major impact on historiography,
education, the social sciences, and the natural
sciences. It had a significant and complex
effect on politics, with romantic thinkers
influencing liberalism, radicalism, conservatism
and nationalism.The movement emphasized intense
emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic
experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions
as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially
that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic
categories of the sublimity and beauty of
nature. It elevated folk art and ancient custom
to something noble, but also spontaneity as
a desirable characteristic (as in the musical
impromptu). In contrast to the Rationalism
and Classicism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism
revived medievalism and elements of art and
narrative perceived as authentically medieval
in an attempt to escape population growth,
early urban sprawl, and industrialism.
Although the movement was rooted in the German
Sturm und Drang movement, which preferred
intuition and emotion to the rationalism of
the Enlightenment, the events and ideologies
of the French Revolution were also proximate
factors. Romanticism assigned a high value
to the achievements of "heroic" individualists
and artists, whose examples, it maintained,
would raise the quality of society. It also
promoted the individual imagination as a critical
authority allowed of freedom from classical
notions of form in art. There was a strong
recourse to historical and natural inevitability,
a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its
ideas. In the second half of the 19th century,
Realism was offered as a polar opposite to
Romanticism. The decline of Romanticism during
this time was associated with multiple processes,
including social and political changes and
the spread of nationalism.
== Defining Romanticism ==
=== Basic characteristics ===
The nature of Romanticism may be approached
from the primary importance of the free expression
of the feelings of the artist. The importance
the Romantics placed on emotion is summed
up in the remark of the German painter Caspar
David Friedrich, "the artist's feeling is
his law". To William Wordsworth, poetry should
begin as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings", which the poet then "recollect[s]
in tranquility", evoking a new but corresponding
emotion the poet can then mold into art.To
express these feelings, it was considered
the content of art had to come from the imagination
of the artist, with as little interference
as possible from "artificial" rules dictating
what a work should consist of. Samuel Taylor
Coleridge and others believed there were natural
laws the imagination—at least of a good
creative artist—would unconsciously follow
through artistic inspiration if left alone.
As well as rules, the influence of models
from other works was considered to impede
the creator's own imagination, so that originality
was essential. The concept of the genius,
or artist who was able to produce his own
original work through this process of creation
from nothingness, is key to Romanticism, and
to be derivative was the worst sin. This idea
is often called "romantic originality." Translator
and prominent Romantic August Wilhelm Schlegel
argued in his Lectures on Dramatic Arts and
Letters that the most phenomenal power of
human nature is its capacity to divide and
diverge into opposite directions.
Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread
as to be normative, was a strong belief and
interest in the importance of nature. This
particularly in the effect of nature upon
the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably
alone. In contrast to the usually very social
art of the Enlightenment, Romantics were distrustful
of the human world, and tended to believe
a close connection with nature was mentally
and morally healthy. Romantic art addressed
its audiences with what was intended to be
felt as the personal voice of the artist.
So, in literature, "much of romantic poetry
invited the reader to identify the protagonists
with the poets themselves".According to Isaiah
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."
=== Etymology ===
The group of words with the root "Roman" in
the various European languages, such as "romance"
and "Romanesque", has a complicated history,
but by the middle of the 18th century "romantic"
in English and romantique in French were both
in common use as adjectives of praise for
natural phenomena such as views and sunsets,
in a sense close to modern English usage but
without the amorous connotation. The application
of the term to literature first became common
in Germany, where the circle around the Schlegel
brothers, critics August and Friedrich, began
to speak of romantische Poesie ("romantic
poetry") in the 1790s, contrasting it with
"classic" but in terms of spirit rather than
merely dating. Friedrich Schlegel wrote in
his Dialogue on Poetry (1800), "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."In both French and German the closeness
of the adjective to roman, meaning the fairly
new literary form of the novel, had some effect
on the sense of the word in those languages.
The use of the word, invented by Friedrich
Schlegel, did not become general very quickly,
and was probably spread more widely in France
by its persistent use by Germaine de Staël
in her De l'Allemagne (1813), recounting her
travels in Germany. In England Wordsworth
wrote in a preface to his poems of 1815 of
the "romantic harp" and "classic lyre", but
in 1820 Byron 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". It is only from the 1820s
that Romanticism certainly knew itself by
its name, and in 1824 the Académie française
took the wholly ineffective step of issuing
a decree condemning it in literature.
=== Period ===
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", 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. Others have
proposed 1780–1830. 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
the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss are
described stylistically as "Late Romantic"
and were composed in 1946–48. 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 the Napoleonic Wars until 1815.
These wars, along with the political and social
turmoil that went along with them, served
as the background for Romanticism. The key
generation of French Romantics born between
1795–1805 had, in the words of one of their
number, Alfred de Vigny, been "conceived between
battles, attended school to the rolling of
drums". According to Jacques 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.
=== Context and place in history ===
The more precise characterization and specific
definition of Romanticism has been the subject
of debate in the fields of intellectual history
and literary history throughout the 20th century,
without any great measure of consensus emerging.
That it was part of the Counter-Enlightenment,
a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment,
is generally accepted in current scholarship.
Its relationship to the French 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, 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", and hence not only to nationalism,
but also fascism and totalitarianism, with
a gradual recovery coming only after World
War II. 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.
Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the
difficulty of defining Romanticism in his
seminal article "On The Discrimination of
Romanticisms" in his Essays in the History
of Ideas (1948); some scholars see Romanticism
as essentially continuous with the present,
some like Robert Hughes see in it the inaugural
moment of modernity, and some like Chateaubriand,
Novalis and Samuel Taylor Coleridge see it
as the beginning of a tradition of resistance
to Enlightenment rationalism—a "Counter-Enlightenment"—
to be associated most closely with German
Romanticism. An earlier definition comes from
Charles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely
situated neither in choice of subject nor
exact truth, but in the way of feeling."The
end of the Romantic era is marked in some
areas by a new style of Realism, which affected
literature, especially the novel and drama,
painting, and even music, through Verismo
opera. This movement was led by France, with
Balzac and Flaubert in literature and Courbet
in painting; Stendhal and Goya 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.
== Literature ==
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
as Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne,
based their writings on the supernatural/occult
and human psychology. Romanticism tended to
regard satire as something unworthy of serious
attention, a prejudice still influential today.
The romantic movement in literature was preceded
by the Enlightenment and succeeded by Realism.
Some authors cite 16th century poet Isabella
di Morra as an early precursor of Romantic
literature. Her lyrics covering themes of
isolation and loneliness, which reflected
the tragic events of her life, are considered
"an impressive prefigurement of Romanticism",
differing from the Petrarchist fashion of
the time based on the philosophy of love.
The precursors of Romanticism in English poetry
go back to the middle of the 18th century,
including figures such as Joseph Warton (headmaster
at Winchester College) and his brother Thomas
Warton, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.
Joseph maintained that invention and imagination
were the chief qualities of a poet. Thomas
Chatterton is generally considered the first
Romantic poet in English. The Scottish poet
James Macpherson influenced the early development
of Romanticism with the international success
of his Ossian cycle of poems published in
1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young
Walter Scott. 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. The Gothic novel, beginning
with Horace Walpole's The 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
early revival of Gothic architecture. Tristram
Shandy, a novel by Laurence Sterne (1759–67)
introduced a whimsical version of the anti-rational
sentimental novel to the English literary
public.
=== Germany ===
An early German influence came from Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, whose 1774 novel The
Sorrows of Young Werther had young men throughout
Europe emulating its protagonist, a young
artist with a very sensitive and passionate
temperament. At that time Germany was a multitude
of small separate states, and Goethe's works
would have a seminal influence in developing
a unifying sense of nationalism. Another philosophic
influence came from the German idealism of
Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling,
making Jena (where Fichte lived, as well as
Schelling, Hegel, Schiller and the brothers
Schlegel) a center for early German Romanticism
(see Jena Romanticism). Important writers
were Ludwig Tieck, Novalis (Heinrich von Ofterdingen,
1799), Heinrich von Kleist and Friedrich Hölderlin.
Heidelberg later became a center of German
Romanticism, where writers and poets such
as Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, and
Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (Aus dem Leben
eines Taugenichts) met regularly in literary
circles.
Important motifs in German Romanticism are
travelling, nature, for example the German
Forest, and Germanic myths. The later German
Romanticism of, for example E. T. A. Hoffmann's
Der Sandmann (The Sandman), 1817, and Joseph
Freiherr von Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild
(The Marble Statue), 1819, was darker in its
motifs and has gothic elements. The significance
to Romanticism of childhood innocence, the
importance of imagination, and racial theories
all combined to give an unprecedented importance
to folk literature, non-classical mythology
and children's literature, above all in Germany.
Brentano and von Arnim were significant literary
figures who together published Des Knaben
Wunderhorn ("The Boy's Magic Horn" or cornucopia),
a collection of versified folk tales, in 1806–08.
The first collection of Grimms' Fairy Tales
by the Brothers Grimm was published in 1812.
Unlike the much later work of Hans Christian
Andersen, who was publishing his invented
tales in Danish from 1835, these German works
were at least mainly based on collected folk
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 1835 Deutsche
Mythologie, a long academic work on Germanic
mythology. Another strain is exemplified by
Schiller's highly emotional language and the
depiction of physical violence in his play
The Robbers of 1781.
=== Great Britain ===
==== England ====
In English literature, the key figures of
the Romantic movement are considered to be
the group of poets including William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord
Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the much
older William Blake, followed later by the
isolated figure of John Clare; also such novelists
as Walter Scott from Scotland and Mary Shelley,
and the essayists William Hazlitt and Charles
Lamb. The publication in 1798 of Lyrical 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 native Lake District,
or his feelings about nature—which he more
fully developed in his long poem The Prelude,
never published in his lifetime. The longest
poem in the volume was Coleridge's The 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, the Lake Poets
were widely regarded as a marginal group of
radicals, though they were supported by the
critic and writer William Hazlitt and others.
In contrast Lord Byron and Walter Scott achieved
enormous fame and influence throughout Europe
with works exploiting the violence and drama
of their exotic and historical settings; Goethe
called Byron "undoubtedly the greatest genius
of our century". Scott achieved immediate
success with his long narrative poem The Lay
of the Last Minstrel in 1805, followed by
the full epic poem Marmion in 1808. Both were
set in the distant Scottish past, already
evoked in Ossian; Romanticism and Scotland
were to have a long and fruitful partnership.
Byron had equal success with the first part
of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812, followed
by four "Turkish tales", all in the form of
long poems, starting with The Giaour in 1813,
drawing from his Grand Tour, which had reached
Ottoman Europe, and orientalizing 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
the historical novel, beginning in 1814 with
Waverley, set in the 1745 Jacobite rising,
which was an enormous and highly profitable
success, followed by over 20 further Waverley
Novels over the next 17 years, with settings
going back to the Crusades that he had researched
to a degree that was new in literature.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 the French 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 spent much time abroad,
and a famous stay on Lake Geneva with Byron
and Shelley in 1816 produced the hugely influential
novel Frankenstein by Shelley's wife-to-be
Mary Shelley and the novella The Vampyre by
Byron's doctor John William Polidori. The
lyrics of Robert Burns in Scotland and Thomas
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 as György 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 as Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and
Vincenzo Bellini's I puritani (both 1835).
Byron is now most highly regarded for his
short lyrics and his generally unromantic
prose writings, especially his letters, and
his unfinished satire Don Juan. 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 the
Greek War of Independence appeared from a
distance to be a suitably Romantic end, entrenching
his legend. 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 government
sinecure, 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, was Jane 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 have detected tremors under
the surface of some works, especially Mansfield
Park (1814) and Persuasion (1817). But around
the mid-century the undoubtedly Romantic novels
of the Yorkshire-based Brontë family appeared.
Most notably Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's
Wuthering 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'd read as children.
Byron, Keats and Shelley all wrote for the
stage, but with little success in England,
with Shelley's The 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 of Shakespeare,
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 to
King Lear; Coleridge said that, "Seeing him
act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes
of lightning."
==== Scotland ====
Although after union 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 the Habbie stanza
as a poetic form. James Macpherson (1736–96)
was the first Scottish poet to gain an international
reputation. Claiming to have found poetry
written by the ancient bard Ossian, he published
translations that acquired international popularity,
being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of
the Classical epics. 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 on Johann Gottfried
von Herder and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
It was also popularised in France by figures
that included Napoleon. Eventually it became
clear that the poems were not direct translations
from the Gaelic, but flowery adaptations made
to suit the aesthetic expectations of his
audience.Robert Burns (1759–96) and Walter
Scott (1771–1832) were highly influenced
by the Ossian cycle. Burns, an Ayrshire poet
and lyricist, is widely regarded as the national
poet of Scotland and a major influence on
the Romantic movement. His poem (and song)
"Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay
(the last day of the year), and "Scots Wha
Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial
national anthem of the country. 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. It launched a highly successful career,
with other historical novels such as Rob Roy
(1817), The Heart of Midlothian (1818) and
Ivanhoe (1820). Scott probably did more than
any other figure to define and popularise
Scottish cultural identity in the nineteenth
century. Other major literary figures connected
with Romanticism include the poets and novelists
James Hogg (1770–1835), Allan Cunningham
(1784–1842) and John Galt (1779–1839).
One of the most significant figures of the
Romantic movement, Lord Byron, was brought
up in Scotland until he inherited his family's
English peerage.
Scotland was also the location of two of the
most important literary magazines of the era,
The Edinburgh Review (founded in 1802) and
Blackwood's Magazine (founded in 1817), which
had a major impact on the development of British
literature and drama in the era of Romanticism.
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."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 the Church 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 and Joanna Baillie
(1762–1851), often influenced by the ballad
tradition and Gothic Romanticism.
=== France ===
Romanticism was relatively late in developing
in French literature, more so than in the
visual arts. The 18th-century precursor to
Romanticism, the cult of sensibility, had
become associated with the Ancien regime,
and the French Revolution had been more of
an inspiration to foreign writers than those
experiencing it at first-hand. The first major
figure was François-René de Chateaubriand,
a minor 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 influential
novella of exile René (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 enormous autobiography
Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe ("Memoirs from beyond
the grave").
After the Bourbon Restoration, French Romanticism
developed in the lively world of Parisian
theatre, with productions of Shakespeare,
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 is Wellington's
aide-de-camp"). Alexandre Dumas began as a
dramatist, with a series of successes beginning
with Henri III et sa cour (1829) before turning
to novels that were mostly historical adventures
somewhat in the manner of Scott, most famously
The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte
Cristo, both of 1844. Victor Hugo published
as a poet in the 1820s before achieving success
on the stage with Hernani—a historical drama
in a quasi-Shakespearian style that had famously
riotous performances on its first run in 1830.
Like Dumas, Hugo is best known for his novels,
and was already writing The 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 play "Cromwell"
gives an important manifesto of French Romanticism,
stating that "there are no rules, or models".
The career of Prosper Mérimée followed a
similar pattern; he is now best known as the
originator of the story of Carmen, with his
novella published 1845. Alfred de Vigny remains
best known as a dramatist, with his play on
the life of the English poet Chatterton (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 with Chopin and several others; she
too was inspired by the theatre, and wrote
works to be staged at her private estate.
French Romantic poets of the 1830s to 1850s
include Alfred de Musset, Gérard de Nerval,
Alphonse de Lamartine and the flamboyant Théophile
Gautier, whose prolific output in various
forms continued until his death in 1872.
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 French retreat 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 are Le Rouge et le
Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La
Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma,
1839).
=== Poland ===
Romanticism in Poland is often taken to begin
with the publication of Adam Mickiewicz's
first poems in 1822, and end with the crushing
of the January Uprising of 1863 against the
Russians. It was strongly marked by interest
in Polish history. Polish Romanticism revived
the old "Sarmatism" traditions of the szlachta
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 and Zygmunt
Krasiński, as well as prose writers such
as Henryk Sienkiewicz. This close connection
between Polish Romanticism and Polish history
became one of the defining qualities of the
literature of Polish Romanticism period, differentiating
it from that of other countries. They had
not suffered the loss of national statehood
as was the case with Poland. 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
Polish nationalism. 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 featured emotionalism and irrationality,
fantasy and imagination, personality cults,
folklore and country life, and the propagation
of ideals of freedom. In the second period,
many of the Polish 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's sovereignty. Elements
of mysticism became more prominent. There
developed the idea of the poeta wieszcz (the
prophet). The wieszcz (bard) functioned as
spiritual leader to the nation fighting for
its independence. The most notable poet so
recognized was Adam Mickiewicz.
Zygmunt Krasinski 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's spiritual
role in its fight for independence, advocating
an intellectual rather than a military superiority.
His works best exemplify the Messianic movement
in Poland: in two early dramas, Nie-boska
komedyia (1835; The Undivine Comedy) and Irydion
(1836; Iridion), as well as in the later Psalmy
przyszłości (1845), he asserted that Poland
was the Christ of Europe: specifically chosen
by God to carry the world's burdens, to suffer,
and eventually be resurrected.
=== Russia ===
Early Russian Romanticism is associated with
the writers Konstantin Batyushkov (A Vision
on the Shores of the Lethe, 1809), Vasily
Zhukovsky (The Bard, 1811; Svetlana, 1813)
and Nikolay Karamzin (Poor Liza, 1792; Julia,
1796; Martha the Mayoress, 1802; The Sensitive
and the Cold, 1803). However the principal
exponent of Romanticism in Russia is Alexander
Pushkin (The Prisoner of the Caucasus, 1820–1821;
The Robber Brothers, 1822; Ruslan and Ludmila,
1820; Eugene Onegin, 1825–1832). Pushkin's
work influenced many writers in the 19th century
and led to his eventual recognition as Russia's
greatest poet. Other Russian Romantic poets
include Mikhail Lermontov (A Hero of Our Time,
1839), Fyodor Tyutchev (Silentium!, 1830),
Yevgeny Baratynsky (Eda, 1826), Anton Delvig,
and Wilhelm Küchelbecker.
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.
=== Spain ===
Romanticism in Spanish literature developed
a well-known literature with a huge variety
of poets and playwrights. The most important
Spanish poet during this movement was José
de Espronceda. After him there were other
poets like Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Mariano
José de Larra and the dramatists Ángel de
Saavedra and José Zorrilla, author of Don
Juan Tenorio. Before them may be mentioned
the pre-romantics José Cadalso and Manuel
José Quintana. The plays of Antonio García
Gutiérrez were adapted to produce Giuseppe
Verdi's operas Il trovatore and Simon Boccanegra.
Spanish Romanticism also influenced regional
literatures. For example, in Catalonia and
in Galicia there was a national boom of writers
in the local languages, like the Catalan Jacint
Verdaguer and the Galician Rosalía de Castro,
the main figures of the national revivalist
movements Renaixença and Rexurdimento, respectively.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". 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. This notion is the subject
of debate for there are authors who stress
that Spain's romanticism is one of the earliest
in Europe, while some assert that Spain really
had no period of literary romanticism. This
controversy underscores a certain uniqueness
to Spanish romanticism in comparison to its
European counterparts.
=== Portugal ===
Romanticism began in Portugal with the publication
of the poem Camões (1825), by Almeida Garrett,
who was raised by his uncle D. Alexandre,
bishop of Angra, in the precepts of Neoclassicism,
which can be observed in his early work. The
author himself confesses (in Camões' preface)
that he voluntarily refused to follow the
principles of epic poetry enunciated by Aristotle
in his Poetics, as he did the same to Horace's
Ars Poetica. Almeida Garrett had participated
in the 1820 Liberal Revolution, which caused
him to exile himself in England in 1823 and
then in France, after the Vila-Francada. While
living in Great Britain, he had contacts with
the Romantic movement and read authors such
as Shakespeare, Scott, Ossian, Byron, Hugo,
Lamartine and de Staël, at the same time
visiting feudal castles and ruins of Gothic
churches and abbeys, which would be reflected
in his writings. In 1838, he presented Um
Auto de Gil Vicente ("A Play by Gil Vicente"),
in an attempt to create a new national theatre,
free of Greco-Roman and foreign influence.
But his masterpiece would be Frei 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 of Romanceiro
("Traditional Portuguese Ballads") (1843),
that recollect a great number of ancient popular
ballads, known as "romances" or "rimances",
in redondilha maior verse form, that contained
stories of chivalry, life of saints, crusades,
courtly love, etc. He wrote the novels Viagens
na Minha Terra, O Arco de Sant'Ana and Helena.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 his liberal ideals.
All of his poetry and prose are (unlike Almeida
Garrett's) entirely Romantic, rejecting Greco-Roman
myth and history. He sought inspiration in
medieval Portuguese poems and chronicles as
in the Bible. 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
in Eurico, o Presbítero ("Eurico, the Priest")
and Lendas e Narrativas ("Legends and Narratives").
His work was influenced by Chateaubriand,
Schiller, Klopstock, Walter Scott and the
Old Testament Psalms.António Feliciano de
Castilho made the case for Ultra-Romanticism,
publishing the poems A Noite no Castelo ("Night
in the Castle") and Os Ciúmes do Bardo ("The
Jealousy of the Bard"), both in 1836, and
the drama Camões. 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 translating Goethe's Faust without
knowing German, but using French versions
of the play. Other notable figures of Portuguese
Romanticism are the famous novelists Camilo
Castelo Branco and Júlio Dinis, and Soares
de Passos, Bulhão Pato and Pinheiro Chagas.Romantic
style would be revived in the beginning of
the 20th century, notably through the works
of poets linked to the Portuguese Renaissance
(Renascença Portuguesa), such as Teixeira
de Pascoais, Jaime Cortesão, Mário Beirão,
among others, who can be considered Neo-Romantics.
An early Portuguese expression of Romanticism
is found already in poets such as Manuel Maria
Barbosa du Bocage (especially in his sonnets
dated at the end of the 18th century) and
Leonor de Almeida Portugal, Marquise of Alorna.
=== Italy ===
Romanticism in Italian literature was a minor
movement, yet still important; it began officially
in 1816 when Germaine de Staël wrote an article
in the journal Biblioteca italiana called
"Sulla maniera e l'utilità delle traduzioni",
inviting Italian people to reject Neoclassicism
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 were Ludovico
di Breme, Pietro Borsieri and Giovanni Berchet.
Better known authors such as Alessandro Manzoni
and Giacomo Leopardi were influenced by Enlightenment
as well as by Romanticism and Classicism.
=== South America ===
Spanish-speaking South American Romanticism
was influenced heavily by Esteban Echeverría,
who wrote in the 1830 and 1840s. His writings
were influenced by his hatred for the Argentine
dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, and filled
with themes of blood and terror, using the
metaphor of a slaughterhouse to portray the
violence of Rosas' dictatorship.
Brazilian Romanticism is characterized and
divided in three different periods. The first
one is basically focused on the creation of
a sense of national identity, using the ideal
of the heroic Indian. Some examples include
José de Alencar, who wrote Iracema and O
Guarani, and Gonçalves Dias, renowned by
the poem "Canção do exílio" (Song of the
Exile). The second period, sometimes called
Ultra-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
are Álvares de Azevedo, Casimiro de Abreu,
Fagundes Varela and Junqueira Freire. The
third cycle is marked by social poetry, especially
the abolitionist movement, and it includes
Castro Alves, Tobias Barreto and Pedro Luís
Pereira de Sousa.
=== United States ===
In the United States, at least by 1818 with
William Cullen Bryant's "To a Waterfowl",
Romantic poetry was being published. American
Romantic Gothic literature made an early appearance
with Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow (1820) and Rip Van Winkle (1819), followed
from 1823 onwards by the Leatherstocking Tales
of James Fenimore Cooper, with their emphasis
on heroic simplicity and their fervent landscape
descriptions of an already-exotic mythicized
frontier peopled by "noble savages", similar
to the philosophical theory of Rousseau, exemplified
by Uncas, from The Last of the Mohicans. There
are picturesque "local color" elements in
Washington Irving's essays and especially
his travel books. Edgar Allan Poe's tales
of the macabre and his balladic poetry were
more influential in France than at home, but
the romantic American novel developed fully
with the atmosphere and melodrama of Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850). Later
Transcendentalist writers such as Henry David
Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson still show
elements of its influence and imagination,
as does the romantic realism of Walt Whitman.
The poetry of Emily Dickinson—nearly unread
in her own time—and Herman Melville's novel
Moby-Dick can be taken as epitomes of American
Romantic literature. By the 1880s, however,
psychological and social realism were competing
with Romanticism in the novel.
==== Influence of European Romanticism on
American writers ====
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.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 to New England Transcendentalism,
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.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.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.
== Visual arts ==
In the visual arts, Romanticism first showed
itself in landscape painting, where from as
early as the 1760s British artists began to
turn to wilder landscapes and storms, and
Gothic architecture, even if they had to make
do with Wales as a setting. Caspar David Friedrich
and J. 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 traditional hierarchy
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 and staffage, but others had small
figures that turned the work into history
painting in the manner of Claude Lorrain,
like Salvator Rosa a late 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."Other groups
of artists expressed feelings that verged
on the mystical, many largely abandoning classical
drawing and proportions. These included William
Blake and Samuel Palmer and the other members
of the Ancients in England, and in Germany
Philipp 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 painter Johan Christian Dahl
was heavily influenced by Friedrich. The Rome-based
Nazarene movement of German artists, active
from 1810, took a very different path, concentrating
on medievalizing history paintings with religious
and nationalist themes.
The arrival of Romanticism in French art was
delayed by the strong hold of Neoclassicism
on the academies, but from the Napoleonic
period it became increasingly popular, initially
in the form of history paintings propagandising
for the new regime, of which Girodet's Ossian
receiving the Ghosts of the French Heroes,
for Napoleon's Château de Malmaison, was
one of the earliest. Girodet's old teacher
David 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". A new generation of the
French school, developed personal Romantic
styles, though still concentrating on history
painting with a political message. Théodore
Géricault (1791–1824) had his first success
with The Charging Chasseur, a heroic military
figure derived from Rubens, at the Paris Salon
of 1812 in the years of the Empire, but his
next major completed work, The Raft of the
Medusa of 1821, 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 with The Barque of Dante (1822),
The Massacre at Chios (1824) and Death 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. His Liberty
Leading the People (1830) remains, with the
Medusa, 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.Francisco Goya was called
"the last great painter in whose art thought
and observation were balanced and combined
to form a faultless unity". 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 the Enlightenment, 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. 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. He also shared with many of the Romantic
painters a more free handling of paint, emphasized
in the new prominence of the brushstroke and
impasto, 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 and Bertel 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 as Rudolf
Maison— rather oddly was missing in Germany,
and mainly found in France, with François
Rude, best known from his group of the 1830s
from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, David d'Angers,
and Auguste Préault. Préault's plaster relief
entitled Slaughter, which represented the
horrors of wars with exacerbated passion,
caused so much scandal at the 1834 Salon that
Préault was banned from this official annual
exhibition for nearly twenty years. In Italy,
the most important Romantic sculptor was Lorenzo
Bartolini.
In France, historical painting on idealized
medieval and Renaissance themes is known as
the style Troubadour, a term with no equivalent
for other countries, though the same trends
occurred there. Delacroix, Ingres and Richard
Parkes Bonington all worked in this style,
as did lesser specialists such as Pierre-Henri
Révoil (1776–1842) and Fleury-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
as Raphael were commemorated on equal terms
with those of rulers, and fictional characters
were also depicted. Fleury-Richard's Valentine
of Milan weeping for the death of her husband,
shown in the Paris 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 like Paul Delaroche.
Another trend was for very large apocalyptic
history paintings, often combining extreme
natural events, or divine wrath, with human
disaster, attempting to outdo The Raft of
the Medusa, and now often drawing comparisons
with effects from Hollywood. The leading English
artist in the style was John Martin, whose
tiny figures were dwarfed by enormous earthquakes
and storms, and worked his way through the
biblical disasters, and those to come in the
final days. Other works such as Delacroix's
Death of Sardanapalus included larger figures,
and these often drew heavily on earlier artists,
especially Poussin and Rubens, with extra
emotionalism and special effects.
Elsewhere in Europe, leading artists adopted
Romantic styles: in Russia there were the
portraitists Orest Kiprensky and Vasily Tropinin,
with Ivan Aivazovsky specializing in marine
painting, and in Norway Hans Gude painted
scenes of fjords. In Italy Francesco Hayez
(1791–1882) was the leading artist of Romanticism
in mid-19th-century Milan. 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
by Gian Battista Tiepolo and other late Baroque
Italian masters.
Literary Romanticism had its counterpart in
the American visual arts, most especially
in the exaltation of an untamed American landscape
found in the paintings of the Hudson River
School. Painters like Thomas Cole, Albert
Bierstadt and Frederic 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
piece Sunrise 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 in W. C. Bryant's poem, To 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's
The 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 towards allegory, explicit
in The Voyage of Life series painted in the
early 1840s, showing the stages of life set
amidst an awesome and immense nature.
== Music ==
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". 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 is Giuseppe Verdi, "a sort of
[Victor] Hugo of opera, gifted with a real
genius for dramatic effect". 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".
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 the Mémoires of André
Grétry. 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 to Jean-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. In 1810 E.T.A. Hoffmann
named Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven 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
late E-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." 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
of Wackenroder and Tieck and later by writers
such as Schelling and Wagner, 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.This
chronologic agreement of musical and literary
Romanticism continued as far as the middle
of the 19th century, when Richard Wagner denigrated
the music of Meyerbeer and Berlioz 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."It was only toward
the end of the 19th century that the newly
emergent discipline of Musikwissenschaft (musicology)—itself
a product of the historicizing proclivity
of the age—attempted a more scientific periodization
of music history, and a distinction between
Viennese Classical and Romantic periods was
proposed. The key figure in this trend was
Guido Adler, who viewed Beethoven and Franz
Schubert as transitional but essentially Classical
composers, with Romanticism achieving full
maturity only in the post-Beethoven generation
of Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Berlioz,
and Franz Liszt. From Adler's viewpoint, found
in books like Der Stil in der Musik (1911),
composers of the New German School and various
late-19th-century nationalist 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.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 as
Alfred Einstein 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 as The Oxford Companion
to Music and Grout's History of Western Music
but was not unchallenged. For example, the
prominent German musicologist Friedrich Blume,
the chief editor of the first edition of Die
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 as expressionism
and neoclassicism. This is reflected in some
notable recent reference works such as the
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
and the new edition of Musik in Geschichte
und Gegenwart.
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 of Paganini
and Liszt, and the conductor began to emerge
as an important figure, on whose skill the
interpretation of the increasingly complex
music depended.
== Outside the arts ==
=== Sciences ===
The Romantic movement affected most aspects
of intellectual life, and Romanticism and
science had a powerful connection, especially
in the period 1800–40. Many scientists were
influenced by versions of the Naturphilosophie
of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph von Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel and others, and without abandoning empiricism,
sought in their work to uncover what they
tended to believe was a unified and organic
Nature. The English scientist Sir Humphry
Davy, a prominent Romantic thinker, said that
understanding nature required "an attitude
of admiration, love and worship, [...] a personal
response." 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.
=== Historiography ===
History writing was very strongly, and many
would say harmfully, influenced by Romanticism.
In England Thomas Carlyle was a highly influential
essayist who turned historian; he both invented
and exemplified the phrase "hero-worship",
lavishing largely uncritical praise on strong
leaders such as Oliver Cromwell, Frederick
the Great and Napoleon. Romantic nationalism
had a largely negative effect on the writing
of history in the 19th century, as each nation
tended to produce 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.
Nationalist ideology of the period placed
great emphasis on racial coherence, and the
antiquity of peoples, and tended to vastly
over-emphasize the continuity between past
periods and the present, leading to national
mysticism. Much historical effort in the 20th
century was devoted to combating the romantic
historical myths created in the 19th century.
=== Theology ===
To insulate theology from reductionism in
science, 19th-century post-Enlightenment German
theologians moved in a new direction, led
by Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht 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.
=== Chess ===
Romantic chess was the style of chess which
emphasized quick, tactical maneuvers rather
than long-term strategic planning. The Romantic
era in chess is generally considered to have
begun with Joseph MacDonnell and Pierre LaBourdonnais,
the two dominant chess players in the 1830s.
The 1840s was dominated by Howard Staunton,
and other leading players of the era included
Adolf Anderssen, Daniel Harrwitz, Henry Bird,
Louis Paulsen, and Paul Morphy. The "Immortal
Game", played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel
Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London – where
Anderssen made bold sacrifices to secure victory,
giving up both rooks and a bishop, then his
queen, and then checkmating his opponent with
his three remaining minor pieces – is considered
a supreme example of Romantic chess. The end
of the Romantic era in chess is considered
to be the 1873 Vienna Tournament where Wilhelm
Steinitz popularized positional play and the
closed game.
== Romantic nationalism ==
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 of national languages and folklore,
and the importance of local customs and traditions,
to the movements that would redraw the map
of Europe and lead to calls for self-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
Celtic linguistic substrates dating from before
the Romanization-Latinization were sought
out.
Early Romantic nationalism was strongly inspired
by Rousseau, and by the ideas of Johann Gottfried
von Herder, who in 1784 argued that the geography
formed the natural economy of a people, and
shaped their customs and society.The nature
of nationalism changed dramatically, however,
after the French Revolution with the rise
of Napoleon, 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 the French Republic
became Napoleon's Empire, Napoleon became
not the inspiration for nationalism, but the
object of its struggle. In Prussia, the development
of spiritual renewal as a means to engage
in the struggle against Napoleon was argued
by, among others, Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
a disciple of Kant. The word Volkstum, 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.
This view of nationalism inspired the collection
of folklore by such people as the Brothers
Grimm, the revival of old epics as national,
and the construction of new epics as if they
were old, as in the Kalevala, compiled from
Finnish tales and folklore, or Ossian, 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 by Charles Perrault, which
they thought proved they were not truly German
tales; Sleeping Beauty survived in their collection
because the tale of Brynhildr convinced them
that the figure of the sleeping princess was
authentically German. Vuk Karadžić contributed
to Serbian 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. Similar projects were
undertaken by the Russian Alexander Afanasyev,
the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
and Jørgen Moe, and the Englishman Joseph
Jacobs.
=== Polish nationalism and messianism ===
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 when Russia's
army crushed the Polish Uprising under Nicholas
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 of
Romantic 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 was Adam
Mickiewicz, who developed an idea that Poland
was the Messiah of Nations, predestined to
suffer just as Jesus 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 of Christendom
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
of Polish culture. The partitions came to
be seen in Poland as a Polish sacrifice for
the security for Western civilization. Adam
Mickiewicz wrote the patriotic drama Dziady
(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". In "Books 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 poem.
Zdzisław Kępiński, however, focuses his
interpretation on Slavic pagan and occult
elements found in the drama. In his book Mickiewicz
hermetyczny he writes about hermetic, theosophic
and alchemical philosophy on the book as well
as Masonic symbols.
== Gallery ==
Emerging Romanticism in the 18th century
French Romantic painting
Other
== Romantic authors ==
== Scholars of Romanticism ==
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
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== Further reading ==
Abrams, Meyer H. 1971. The Mirror and the
Lamp. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN
0-19-501471-5.
Abrams, Meyer H. 1973. Natural Supernaturalism:
Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature.
New York: W.W. Norton.
Barzun, Jacques. 1943. Romanticism and the
Modern Ego. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Barzun, Jacques. 1961. Classic, Romantic,
and Modern. University of Chicago Press. ISBN
9780226038520.
Berlin, Isaiah. 1999. The Roots of Romanticism.
London: Chatto and Windus. ISBN 0-691-08662-1.
Blanning, Tim. The Romantic Revolution: A
History (2011) 272pp
Breckman, Warren, European Romanticism: A
Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St.
Martin's, 2007. European Romanticism: A Brief
History with Documents. Amazon.com. 2008.
ISBN 978-0312450236.
Cavalletti, Carlo. 2000. Chopin and Romantic
Music, translated by Anna Maria Salmeri Pherson.
Hauppauge, New York: Barron's Educational
Series. (Hardcover) ISBN 0-7641-5136-3 ; ISBN
978-0-7641-5136-1.
Chaudon, Francis. 1980. The Concise Encyclopedia
of Romanticism. Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell
Books. ISBN 0-89009-707-0.
Ciofalo, John J. 2001. "The Ascent of Genius
in the Court and Academy." The Self-Portraits
of Francisco Goya. Cambridge University Press.
Cox, Jeffrey N. 2004. Poetry and Politics
in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt
and Their Circle. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 9780521604239.
Dahlhaus, Carl. 1979. "Neo-Romanticism". 19th-Century
Music 3, no. 2 (November): 97–105.
Dahlhaus, Carl. 1980. Between Romanticism
and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of
the Later Nineteenth Century, translated by
Mary Whittall in collaboration with Arnold
Whittall; also with Friedrich Nietzsche, "On
Music and Words", translated by Walter Arnold
Kaufmann. California Studies in 19th Century
Music 1. Berkeley: University of California
Press. ISBN 0-520-03679-4 (cloth); 0520067487
(pbk). Original German edition, as Zwischen
Romantik und Moderne: vier Studien zur Musikgeschichte
des späteren 19. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Musikverlag
Katzbichler, 1974.
Dahlhaus, Carl. 1985. Realism in Nineteenth-Century
Music, translated by Mary Whittall. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-26115-5 (cloth); ISBN 0-521-27841-4
(pbk). Original German edition, as Musikalischer
Realismus: zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts.
Munich: R. Piper, 1982. ISBN 3-492-00539-X.
Fabre, Côme, and Felix Krämer (eds.). 2013.
L'ange du bizarre: Le romantisme noire de
Goya a Max Ernst, à l'occasion de l'Exposition,
Stadel Museum, Francfort, 26 septembre 2012
– 20 janvier 2013, Musée d'Orsay, Paris,
5 mars – 9 juin 2013. Ostfildern: Hatje
Cantz. ISBN 9783775735902.
Fay, Elizabeth. 2002. Romantic Medievalism.
History and the Romantic Literary Ideal. Houndsmills,
Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Gaull, Marilyn. 1988. English Romanticism:
The Human Context. New York and London: W.
W. Norton. ISBN 978-0393955477.
Geck, Martin. 1998. "Realismus". Die Musik
in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzyklopädie
der Musik begründe von Friedrich Blume, second,
revised edition, edited by Ludwig Finscher.
Sachteil 8: Quer–Swi, cols. 91–99. Kassel,
Basel, London, New York, Prague: Bärenreiter;
Suttgart and Weimar: Metzler. ISBN 3-7618-1109-8
(Bärenreiter); ISBN 3-476-41008-0 (Metzler).
Gillespie, Gerald, Manfred Engel, and Bernard
Dieterle (eds.). 2008. Romantic Prose Fiction
(= A Comparative History of Literatures in
European Languages, Bd. XXIII; ed. by the
International Comparative Literature Association).
Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN
978-90-272-3456-8. [esp. pp. 263–295].
Grewe, Cordula. 2009. Painting the Sacred
in the Age of German Romanticism. Burlington:
Ashgate. Painting the Sacred in the Age of
Romanticism. Amazon.com. 2009. ISBN 978-0754606451.
Hamilton, Paul, ed. The Oxford Handbook of
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Hesmyr, Atle. 2018. From Enlightenment to
Romanticism in 18th Century Europe
Holmes, Richard. 2009. The Age of Wonder:
How the Romantic Generation Discovered the
Beauty and Terror of Science. London: HarperPress.
ISBN 9780007149520. New York: Pantheon Books.
ISBN 9780375422225. Paperback reprint, New
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0064300897 (pbk.).
Kravitt, Edward F. 1992. "Romanticism Today".
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to the Romantic Age. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press. Online at Oxford
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school of nature : nineteenth-century drawings
and paintings from the Karen B. Cohen collection.
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Plantinga, Leon. 1984. Romantic Music: A History
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Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag; Kassel and New
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== External links ==
Romanticism explored on 
the British Library Discovering Literature
website
The Romantic Poets
The Great Romantics
Dictionary of 
the 
History of Ideas, Romanticism
Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Romanticism
in Political Thought
Romantic Circles Electronic editions, histories,
and scholarly articles related to the 
Romantic era
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