The Romantic Movement.

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

IN LITERATURE

The Romantic Period was a literary, musical and artistic movement in Europe and America during the late 1700s through to the middle 1800s. Romanticism was characterised by five basic tenets. It is not surprising that these were radically different from the characteristics of the Enlightenment. Just as the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, literary movements often seem to be extreme reactions to the literary movements that precede them. Romanticism was an intentional revolt against the rational, formal, reasonable period of the Enlightenment.

The Romantic Movement emphasised emotions over reason; feelings and intuition were more prevalent than intellectual ideas or thoughts. How different this is from the previous period, the Age of Reason. Emotions, even passions and sexual attractions, were addressed in literature written during the Romantic Period.

Writers during the Romantic Period wrote from their imaginations rather than presenting life realistically. So, in contrast to the realistic literature written during the Enlightenment, literature written during the Romantic Period was imaginative and unrealistic.

Another difference between the Romantics and the writers of the Enlightenment was a focus on individual concerns rather than on society's. No longer was public life more important than private life nor did the concerns of society take precedence over the problems of individuals, like Wordsworth a defining member of the English Romantic Movement. Like other Romantics, Wordsworth’s personality and poetry were deeply influenced by his love of nature, especially by the sights and scenes of the Lake District, in which he spent most of his mature life. A profoundly earnest and sincere thinker, he displayed a high seriousness tempered with tenderness and a love of simplicity.

Two other characteristics of the Romantics concerned the characters who were featured in their literature. These writers felt a reverence for nature and the common man. Rural life was considered ideal, and heroes of the literature during this period were usually from humble origins. A revolutionary difference from literature of the past was the Romantics’ use of normal everyday language in their poetry--the language of the common man. Also, there was an increasing importance of children and women. Children, especially, were esteemed in literature of the Romantic Period, and females were much more likely than in the past to be significant characters. Poets such as John Keats One of England’s greatest poets, this everyday language to great effect, he was a key element in the Romantic Movement. Known especially for his love of the country and sensuous descriptions of the beauty of nature, his poetry also resonated with deep philosophic questions.

Rather than the non-fiction of the Enlightenment, most literature written during the Romantic Period was fiction. Poetry and novels were the prevalent genres. Women authors were much more common also; however, women often used masculine pseudonyms (or pen names) because they felt their works might not be respected or taken seriously if readers knew they were females.

IN MUSIC

Unlike the Classical period, which represents a complete break from the Baroque, the Romantic Era seems to have slipped very smoothly from its predecessor. Many of the top creative ...

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IN MUSIC

Unlike the Classical period, which represents a complete break from the Baroque, the Romantic Era seems to have slipped very smoothly from its predecessor. Many of the top creative artists alive at the end of the Classical period became the founders of the Romantic Movement.

If there is one individual who single handedly changed the course of music, it would have to be Beethoven. A talented child prodigy, Beethoven had both the opportunity and the misfortune to live in very interesting times. A young man of 19 when the French revolution occurred, Beethoven grew to be obsessed with ideas of freedom, liberty, and equality, eventually embodying those ideas into his music. Later in his life, his impending deafness served only to harden his resolve rather than make him back off from his beliefs. His best and most deeply felt music was written after he became totally deaf. For many, he became the personification of the Romantic spirit--the lone brave soul taking on Fate itself. The liberation of the individual became the focal point of the frenzied Romantics as they unleashed their passions into their music and art.

To sum up the era in general, Romantic music spared nothing in its emotional effect. When the music conveys sadness, it is an almost theatrically profound grief. When the music conveys joy, the heavens seem to open wide with angelic choirs. Romantic music will never be accused of subtlety or tact. Like Impressionism, the later movement of Expressionism was a strong reaction against the Romantic style. As Romanticism chose to show the grand and glorious, Expressionism chose to deal with the darker, more hidden emotions in what it expressed.

As European To understand the music and art of the era, one must always keep an eye on the social processes that produced them. The Romantic era was sparked by many revolutions. The American Revolution, which sloughed off the rule of the monarchs as well as feudalistic tradition was soon followed by the French Revolution which also granted bold new freedoms. The Industrial Revolution was spreading throughout the West in the early 1800's along with many other literary and scientific innovations, causing much change. The resulting social upheaval reflected searching, experimentation, and a quest for the ultimate power that a human being could attain--so much so, that philosopher Frederich Nietzsche proclaimed that religion and a belief in God were completely useless.

For musicians, the patronage system had been left far behind. Most were very comfortable freelancing, acting as their own agents. Romantic music represents a much more personal approach to music, writing for the common man. Where Baroque music seems to be relating to a specific few and Classical music seems to be relating to Every man, Romantic music is often a very personal journey into the private thoughts and feelings of the composer.

A popular archtypical figure was the "Romantic Hero". This was the image of the impassioned artistic genius, obsessed with an ideal and a quest for perfection, tragically doomed by Fate (perhaps a physical ailment, or as we say, "struck down in the prime of life"). A little of this image was the hero worship of that century. In a way, that ideal isn't much different from some of our musical and artistic heroes of today. Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix these are all examples of artists who became larger than life after their deaths.

When the Romantic era finally came to an end, it basically had burst at the seams. The gigantically scaled works of Mahler, Richard Strauss, Wagner, et al pushed the forms and the ideas that could be expressed to the breaking point. Society began to change into an era with different needs and a different way of thinking the big excesses of the past seemed to lose their relevancy. The twentieth century, with its technological trappings, was about to cause music to greatly change its sound and purpose.

Nearly a century after it ended, we still have some of the echoes of Romanticism with us. Among listeners, Romantic music is still the most popular of any past music.

IN ART

England's metamorphosis during the Industrial Revolution was reflected in the outlook of the individual, and therefore in the art produced during the first half of this century. Heightened sensibility and intensified feeling became characteristic of the visual arts as well as musical arts and a convention in literature. This tendency toward images of impassioned or poignant feeling cut across all national boundaries. Romanticism, as this movement became known, reflects the movement of writers, musicians, painters, and sculptors away from rationalism toward the more subjective side of human experience. Feeling became both the subject and object of art.

By the mid-nineteenth century, much of Europe had become industrialised, and the generation of artists who had inaugurated the Romantic Movement were dead. But much of the romantic spirit lived on. In their emphasis on individual genius and subjective experience, arts of the Romantic era handed future generations the basis for their own development and provided a point of view that coloured their understanding of the past.

As Europe entered the nineteenth century, those forces that would shape her political and cultural destiny were already in place. From 1799 to 1815 the most powerful figure in Europe was Napoleon Bonaparte. During his meteoric rise and fall France was at war with the rest of Europe, and after his defeat Europe's political structure was changed forever.

Some artists were interested in painting contemporary, topical events, not only as a depiction of that particular event, but also as an exploration of the passionate emotions and truths that underlay it. In the eyes of these artists, the illumination of the Enlightenment had been dimmed by the atrocities of their age.

Ranging from historical paintings to portraiture, there was a fundamental shift in the concept of what art was supposed to depict. Images of physical and emotional violence, madness and struggle sought to portray man's inhumanity to man and the loss of reason they felt defined their age.

The early Romantic period was a time of great thinkers, artists, and scientists. It is possible that the wealth of creativity at the time reflected the desire of 18th century philosophers to reassess reality and, in particular, man's role in the universe.

Early Romantic music was all about emotion and individual expression--the extremes of joy and sorrow, triumph and dejection, passion and despair. The intensity of passion, individualism and the striving for self-expression are central to the Romantic spirit.

In an age of sweeping revolution and change, the heart of a continent torn by hysteria and madness ventured out of the darkness of the city to return to the wilds of nature. Individuality, nature, and emotion dominated the minds of restless individuals weary of logic, reason, science, and industry. The spirit of an era awoke, fuelled with passion and rebellion, and quickly spread to all aspects of culture to unveil everything contrary to the Enlightenment. The disturbing, the supernatural, the beautiful, and the wild. Romanticism, intense and rebellious, overthrew all conventions, convention had never been defied in such a manner before, nor would it ever be restored again. The era specifies to us how far Romanticism pervaded culture and continent; it shows how lasting works of Romantic art, literature, and music representative of the great era still influence us today. Most of our freedoms of thought, our passion, and our questioning nature was spawned by them, but we are forgetting what they did, becoming complacent, we are slowly slipping back into those dark times before the surge of revolution. We are not questioning but accepting what we are told, slowly those conventions and establishments are being rebuilt and repackaged, soon 1984 could be reality.