Its Growth and Characteristics

 The Industrial Revolution  The Age of Revolution  Neoclassicism

 The American Revolution (1783)  The French Revolution (1789)  Napoleonic Wars ( )

 Emphasis on rationality, logic, and scientific observation of the outer world: passion should be controlled;  Social needs are more important than individual needs; valued stability, harmony, and a social hierarchy;  Believed that nature could be controlled by humans;  Truth and order can be found through scientific observation;

 Romanticism emphasized imagination  Romantics believed that imagination helped people not only perceive reality, but also create it while Neoclassical thought emphasized reason over imagination; Romantic: imagination is the window to the soul Neoclassical: reason is the mirror to reality

Romantics emphasized nature  Perceived nature as an organic whole as opposed to neoclassicists who saw nature as a mechanism (God as clock-maker);  Saw a connection between nature and life, a means of using nature to understand life. John Constable

 Romantics emphasized emotion over reason  Intuition, instincts and feelings are more important than logical reasoning.  The source of art is the individual artist rather than nature (making art’s purpose mimetic rather than revelatory).  This leads to an emotional, intuitive understanding of the world.

Romantics emphasized individualism and rebellion over social stability; Emphasis on introspection, psychology, melancholy and sadness.

A belief in the power of imagination and an interest in the supernatural and exotic

  march_of_the_machine.htm