Romanticism – A New Trend
The outline
Characteristics
Literature
Visual arts
Architecture
an artistic, literary and intellectual movement
Europe: the end of the 18th century
peak: from 1800 to 1850
reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment, scientific rationalization of nature
visual arts, music, and literature
associated with liberalism,radicalism
rejection of rules, social conventions, idealization, logic, reason
Basic characteristics
beauty of nature
focus on senses, human personality, emotions, imagination and potential
a new view of the artist
a preoccupation with the genius, the hero
Basic characteristics
Basic characteristics
imagination
interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins and the medieval era
interest in the exotic, the mysterious
Literature
medieval romance
Lyrical Ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
exotic and the mysterious X the elegant formality and artificiality of prevailing Classical forms of literature.
themes: 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
an interest in the rural and natural
love of nature
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
Romantic hero
rejects established norms and conventions
rejected by society
focus on the character's thoughts rather than his or her actions.
First in works by Byron, Keats
the self as the center of his/her own existence
Example: Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice
Notable Writers
Pre-Romantics
Robert Burns, William Blake
First Generation Romantics
- William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, R. Southey
Second Generation Romantics
- George Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats
Novel in the Romantic Period
Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Walter Scott, Bronte
sisters
Visual arts
Landscape, storms, apocalyptic paintings, paintings in watercolour
dramatic effects of light, atmosphere, and colour
bizarre, pathetic, or extravagantly heroic
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of
Fog 1818
John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888
Johan Christian Dahl Outbreak of the Vesuvius
Thomas Cole, Childhood, one of the 4 scenes in The Voyage of Life, 1842
Architecture
• imitations of older architectural styles
• Gothic revival: Characterized by bright and soaring spaces, use of large windows, linear building designs, statues,
pointed arches
The English Landscape Garden
• carefully planned to look unplanned
• irregularly spaced clumps of trees, little lakes and rivers instead of symmetrical basins and canals
Thank you for your attention!
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic /508675/Romanticism
