1. A Movement Across the Arts
Romanticism
A Movement Across the Arts

2. Definition Romanticism is characterized by the 5 “I”s
Romanticism refers to an artistic, literary, intellectual movement, began in Europe at the end of the 18th century and peaked in U.S. between 1800 and 1850.
Romanticism is characterized by the 5 “I”s
Imagination / Not Rationalism
Intuition / Not Reason
Idealism / Not Realism
Inspiration/ instinct & emotion
Individuality / Not tradition

3. Imagination Imagination emphasized over “reason.”
A rejection of rationalism characterized by the “Age of Reason.”
Imagination considered necessary for creating all art.

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

5. Idealism
Idealism is the concept that we can make the world a better place;
The power of human potential;
Idealism refers to any theory that emphasizes the spirit, the mind, or language over matter;

6. Inspiration
The Romantic artist, musician, or writer, is an “inspired creator” rather than a “technical master.”
What this means is “going with the moment” or being spontaneous, rather than “getting it precise.”

7. Individuality Romantics celebrated the individual.
During this time period, Women’s Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as major movements.
Walt Whitman, a later Romantic writer, would write a poem entitled “Song of Myself”: it begins, “I celebrate myself…”

8. Origins
Romanticism began to take root as a movement following the French Revolution.
The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1792 is considered the beginning of literary Romanticism.

9. The Arts
Romanticism was a movement across all the arts: visual art, music, and literature.
All of the arts embraced themes prevalent in the Middle Ages: chivalry, courtly love. Literature and art from this time depicted these themes. Music (ballets and operas) illustrated these themes.
Shakespeare came back into vogue.

10. Visual Arts
Revolutionary Period art was rigid, severe, and unemotional; it hearkened back to ancient Greece and Rome.
Romantic Period art was emotional, deeply-felt, individualistic, and exotic. It has been described as a reaction to Neoclassicism, or “anti-Classicism.”

11. Romantic Period Art
Ivan Aivazovsky
Revolutionary Period Art
Christopher Eckersberg

13. Music
“Classical” musicians included composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Josef Haydn.
Music Room
Romantic musicians included composers like Frederic Chopin, Franz Lizst, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky

14. Music: Components
Classical music emphasized internal order and balance.
Romantic music emphasized expression of feelings.

15. Literature
Romanticism most strongly influenced literature in the United States;
Writers explored supernatural and gothic themes.
Writers wrote about nature – Transcendentalists believed God was in nature, unlike “Age of Reason” writers like Franklin and Jefferson, who saw God as a “divine watchmaker,” who created the universe and left it to run itself.

16. The Romantic Era Transcendentalism Anti-Trans/ Gothic
Promoted feelings and imagination over reason and fact.
Celebrated life as it could be rather than how it is or should be.
Transcendentalism Anti-Trans/ Gothic
Belief: The world is a Belief: The world COULD
wonderful/beautiful contain evil. Explored the
place. All humans are question, “What if people capable of perfection can’t/don’t find their inner IF they get in touch selves” or “What if their with their inner selves inner selves aren’t perfect”?
Ralph Waldo Emerson Herman Melville
Walt Whitman Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allan Poe

17. Transcendentalism
A philosophy that originated in the 1830's. Its chief proponent was Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” The Transcendentalism movement was the mainstream flow of writers in the New England Renaissance

18. Transcendentalism
Idealism – human potential could be reached by becoming one with nature;
Nature's peaceful and serene setting is the only place where a person may transcend personal experience and ascend to God’s level.
Experience the sublime beyond words, reason, knowledge, etc.

19. Anti-Transcendentalism
A philosophical movement predominantly consisting of a small group of writers including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville;
These two were leaders of a movement that dared to go against the conventional belief;
Hawthorne and Melville are considered two of the greatest fiction writers of their time;
These writers opposed what they felt was impractical perspective.

20. Anti-Transcendentalism
Gothic Literature:
*dark castles
*palaces
*chambers
*haunted mansions
*ghosts
*spirits
*vampires