1. The Romantic Period
The Zeitgeist

2. Zeitgeist: a pervasive intellectual climate. The Spirit of the Age
In the Romantic Period we see an explosive release of artistic energy, an experimental boldness, and creative power that marks an artistic renaissance

3. Keats had the sense that “great spirts now on Earth are sojourning.”
In Shelley’s Defense of Poetry he claimed that the literature of his age “has arisen as it were from a new birth,” and that “an electric life burns” within the words of the best writers, which is “less their spirit than the spirit of the age.”

4. William Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age (1825)
Described how the French Revolution seemed “the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been given to men’s minds.” And he said that the school of Wordsworth “had its origin in the French Revolution.”

5. Characteristics of the Romantic Period
(1) Imagination, Emotions, and Intuition. Exaltation of intense feelings.
Descartes: I think, therefore I am. vs
Rousseau: I felt before I thought.
(2) Subjectivity of approach; the cult of the individual; the absolute uniqueness of every individual.

6. Characteristics of Romanticism
(3) Freedom of thought and expression.
A revolt against authority and tyranny, against the ancien regime, whether social, political, religious, or artistic.
Thomas Paine: “The Rights of Man.”
Mary Wolstonecraft: “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792)
Alienation and rebellion: Cult of Youth, Energy, and Idealism

7. Characteristics of Romanticism
(4) Idealization of Nature
Embracing the uncivilized, the wild, the pre-civilized.
Rousseau: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” In other words, civilization is in part the cause of our corruption.
The “noble savage,” and James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels, I.e. The Last of the Mohicans.

8. But there were 2 views of Nature
The first viewed nature as peaceful, calm, nurturing, a source for spiritual renewal. It often showed an innocent life of rural dwellers, a world of peace and harmony which nurtures and comforts the human spirit. This is very much how Wordsworth viewed nature.

9. John Constable: The Hay Wain

10. But nature could also be frightening in its power, and cause a dizzying sense of awe and wonder.

11. J.M.W. Turner: Avalanche

12. Edmund Burke defined these two views of nature as:
The beautiful
and
The sublime

13. A BRIEF SERIES OF PAINTINGS FROM THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
Starting with Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was President of the Royal Academy in England

16. Blake quit the Royal Academy partly because of Sir Joshua Reynolds
So, on to some of Blake works

21. Two Works by Henry Fuseli, a Swiss artist living in England who was friends with Blake

24. One of the most interesting artists of the period is J.M.W. Turner
Starting with an early, fairly conventional painting

35. And then to end on John Constable
Who said, “I try to paint as if I had never seen a painting before.”

39. And then: Eugene Delacroix

43. And . . . Caspar David Friedrich