When a person hears the word Romanticism, his first thought may be of romance story books or novels or illustrated books depicting romantic art. A few individuals, however, may connect the root of the word to a certain city on the Tiber. Despite the apparent connection between the words, romanticism has little to do with romance, nor did the Romantic Movement originate in any country that speaks of romance related legends.
The Romantic Movement started in Germany and England in the late 18th Century, and it ended with the death of Goethe and Sir Walter Scott in 1832. The Romantic Movement followed the neoclassicism school of art and was in many ways a rebellion against the tenets of neoclassicism. The artists and writers who worked when the neoclassicism school held sway saw the universe as an orderly place that the human kid could control. Nature existed so that mankind could tame it and harness its power rather than the other way around. The prevailing philosophy of neoclassicism was that with the use of order and reason, the universe could ultimately be understood and that the individual was merely part of the greater whole. Although the official date marking the end of the Romantic period is given to be 1832, authors in the USA and some painters in Europe went on to continue the tradition beyond the day.
Instead of embracing the ideas of their predecessors, the artists of the Romantic period saw an individual as a heroic entity capable of achieving great things through sheer force of will. The individual was still a part of the universe, but the creativity an individual possessed could propel him / her to great heights. What made the individual unique was his / her ability to use imagination as a creative force. One poet who wrote during the age of Romanticism expressed pity for people with no spark of imagination in them.
It may seems strange that the greatest example of individual power during this period is not one of the many artists and authors working during the Romantic period, but Napoleon Bonaparte. The name of Bonaparte may not be popular today, but he started out as a lowly soldier and rose to become an Emperor through his own abilities. This feat makes him the perfect example of the self-made man that the Romanticism movement idealized. Certainly, the victories Napoleon managed to achieve required a special type of strategic creativity.
The authors and artists also broke with the Neoclassicism school by changing the way nature was viewed in works of art. Only one single unifying philosophy connected how every author and artist of the Romantic period viewed at nature. Rather than being considered as something to be harnessed and controlled, nature was viewed a good thing that served as a source of inspiration.
Modern schools of Literature and Art have demoted the individual from the supreme place he enjoyed in the Romanticism school, suggesting instead that an artist cannot help but be influenced by his surrounding environment. This web of influence includes other artists, painters and writers with whom a person producing any work of art is familiar. It holds true for the Romantic writers as well. Since Romanticism was a rebellion against the artistic school that preceded it; it could not help but be influenced by the rejection of the ideals of neoclassicism. Romantic period authors interpreted their ideals in such a way that strange dichotomy developed in the writings of the period. Many authors chose real settings and real characters, but others chose fantastic backgrounds or unbelievable events that their protagonists needed to overcome. A few writers skillfully interwove elements of the fantastic and the believable.
Poe’s tale, The Tell-tale Heart might be the best example of this, while at the same time the fantastic elements of the tale simply might be the work of a guilty conscious. The reader is never informed whether or not anyone else in the room other than the murderer heard the beating heart of the victim. Other works, such as Coleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner clearly spell out events that cannot happen, but instead play on another theme during the period.
Neoclassicism, which started during the Age of Enlightenment, was marked with a ‘turn away’ from superstition. Applying the principles of rational thought was the beginning to solving all of mankind’s problems. Emotion was not eliminated by Neoclassical artists, but emotion was often viewed as a hindrance. Further, turning away from the previous school, the artists of the Romantic period felt that emotion was a necessary and vital part of life and that emotion and imagination often came up with solutions that reasoning alone could not achieve. In the worlds that the Romantic authors created, a single person could change the world, but he did so through utilizing his creative power, imagination and understanding his emotions rather than regarding them as a hindrance.
Although Romanticism ended nearly two centuries ago, many of its ideals still live on. The individual may see less importance in the artwork of today where the voice of an author is believed to be controlled by his surroundings, but the idea of a person being able to change the world through his abilities and ideas lives on.
The Age of Enlightenment had weakened the hold of religion on the people of Europe, and now many authors feel no problem / hesitation with including God, Satan and other figures in their play simply as characters, rather than showing the respect previous authors had given them. The key figures of Christianity could now be portrayed in the same way that previous artists had portrayed the Gods of Greece and Ancient Rome in. Romanticism may no longer be the school of prevailing literature and artistic thought, but its effects are alive and prevalent. Perhaps, this is because it started as a grass roots movement and the authors and artists did not view themselves as innately superior to the common man, and many of the movements’ ideals survive in both modern art and society.
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