1. Romanticism and the Sublime
Caspar David Friedrich,
The Abbey in the Oakwood (1808–10).

2. Romanticism
A movement across the arts, including literature, the visual arts, and music.
Height of the movement was between 1780 and 1830.
Primarily in Europe and the United States.

3. Imagination FREEDOM REVOLUTION Love of the Wild and Dramatic
Rejection of Reason
Valorization of the INDIVIDUAL
SOLITUDE
VISION
SOUL

5. The Sublime
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.
-Edmund Burke. On the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757.

6. Caspar David Friedrich, The Sea of Ice (1823–24)

7. The Sublime
Man sees his own potential in the grandeur of nature and in the boundless landscapes therein. He also believed that this applied to both man's freedom and lack thereof, and moving from restriction to freedom results in an inner elevation. In this way, the sublime becomes internalized, and "physical grandeur {becomes} transformed into spiritual grandeur."
-Christian Hirschfield, Theorie der Gartenkunst (trans. Theory of Gardening 1779–1780)

8. Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, 1808-1810

9. The Sublime Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery
In which the heavy and weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened.
-William Wordsworth, from "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (37-41).

10. Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

11. Mark Rothko, Blue and Gray, 1962

12. Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, 1808-1810 (DETAIL)
Mark Rothko, Blue and Gray, 1962

13. Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, 1808-1810

14. Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

15. Terms
Romanticism
The Sublime
Frame Story