Romanticism a movement in literature, the arts, and music, lasted from about 1750 and 1870. Romanticism grew out of a reaction to both the classicists and neo-classicists/Enlightenment themes. The Enlightenment occurred alongside Romanticism, and each countered the other’s ideas and values. Additionally, Romanticism grew in reaction to the wars and political upheaval of the 18th Century in much of Europe, the United States, Central and South America.
Romanticism was a literary revolution that questioned and challenged Classical views.. Shaped to a large degree by the ideas and ideals of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Romanticism introduced literary themes that countered themes coming from writers of the Age of Enlightenment (the Age of Reason) writers including John Locke, Voltaire, Baruch Spinoza, and Isaac Newton. Where Enlightenment writers wrote of the value of tradition and reason; Romanticists wrote of emotion, imagination, and freedom of thought and being. Where writers of the Enlightenment wrote of the human intellect, the capacity to reason and master scientific discovery, writers of the Romantic school emphasized Individual creativity, the value of the individual intellect, and and the importance of breaking established rules to allow greater freedom and innovation of thought.
Rousseau wrote of the romantic spirit and the cult of the individual that championed freedom of the human spirit, “I felt before I thought,” a direct counter statement to Renee Descartes, “I think therefore I am.” Goethe wrote justifying revolt against an unjust political authority in The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). The Sorrows of Young Werther changed the way writers wrote about and understood war. They no longer elevated war to a place of heroic sacrifice, but recognized its effect on the human spirit and the toll it took on humanity.
Poetry and ballads written by Samuel Colegridge and William Wordsworth, affirmed the importance of feeling and imagination over reason, emotions over logic, and intuition over scientific theory. Romanticism almost always focused on the yearning for something beyond or something lost. A nostalgia for lost past or a dramatic future were often themes in Romantic prose and poetry. Seeking another reality, escape, or transformation of the everyday was characteristic of Romanticism.
Romanticists changed the view of the hero. Rather than the god-like hero modeled after the Greek ideal, Romanticists created more complex heroic figures. The inner struggles, passions, moods, and conflicts of the hero are explored. Writers began explored personality and the inner psyche of individuals. New characters emerged representing the common person. Anyone could be heroic, and could struggle with passions.. Self expression and the uniqueness and power of the individual is born in literature.
Romanticist view Nature as a refuge. The relationship of humans to Nature changes. Nature is no longer viewed as dark, evil, and primitive, but is viewed, particularly by the American Transcendentalists, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Margaret Sanger, Louisa May Alcott explored the revolutionary idea that within the individual’s soul was the soul of the world. The Transcendentalism, sometimes called the American Romanticism, included a wide variety of Romantic literary themes including: the value of the individual over the value of the community (in direct revolt to puritanical ideas of that so greatly influenced colonial America or family the highest value during the Revolution; seeking connection with the Divine within, in relationship with family, and in places other than churches; and in the search for meaning within one’s self, imagination, intuition, senses, instincts, observation, and experience.
Emerson’s work, Nature, Alcott’s Little Women, and Thoreau’s Walden Pond, reflect the theme of focusing on the individual’s search for connection in the natural world. From his work, Nature and Selected Essays, Emerson expresses the Romanticist’s ideal of finding oneself in nature,
“I am the lover o
f un-contained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.”
The theme of Nature abounds in Romantic literature. Nature in its idealized form, seems magical, divine as opposed to the prevailing view of the times that nature was wild, untamed, and somehow evil. Romanticism viewed humans in harmony with nature.
Liberationism was a powerful them in Romantic literature. The theme of Libertarianism can be found throughout the works of Romantic writers from all parts of the world. The Romantic poets, Percy, Shelley, and Byron, wrote in protest of the tyranny and degradation of the common person as they witnessed it in Greece and Italy. Lord Byron’s poem, The Two Foscari, reads,
“ Tyranny is far the worst of treasons.
Dost thous deem
None rebels except subjects?
The prince who neglects or violates his trust is more
A brigand than the robber-chief.”
In his work, Manfred, Byron writes a reflective piece:
“The night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness
I learned the language of another world.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin dealt with the issue of abolition as did and Stowe also wrote within the novel itself a striking view of the painful reality of life. Stowe illustrated the contrast between the idealized writing of a piece of fiction and the raw and real life humans suffer:
“Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…” (From Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe).
Romantic authors and poets wrote of life, intermingling themes of Nature, Liberationism, and importance and freedom of the individual. Romanticism elevates the importance of the individual in literature. Unlike classical literature which focused on themes of heroic proportions and idealized characters, Romanticists prized the common person. The freedom and value of the individual allows writers to focus on the inner and outer struggles to connect with oneself, nature, the Universe, and find meaning in the everyday and mundane. Changes brought about in social, cultural, political, philosophical ideas coupled with urbanization, industrialization, and movements to bring about more equality and suffrage for women, changed the nature of life for men and women of all social strata. A major theme of Romantic literature revolves around the plight of the common man/woman. Goethe revives the ancient tale of Faust, the story of a brilliant man who makes a bargain with the devil. The man exchanges his soul for enlightenment. In the end, he is saved by the love of a good woman. Goethe’s Faust written in the 18th Century, examines the age-old question of the power of the Divine and the limitations of humans. In the quest for knowledge, man is pitted against desire and the ideal of pure love.
Another theme that arose within Romantic literature is that of belief in the Supernatural. Sometimes referred to as Gothic literature, includes Edgar Allen Poe Sir Walter Scott, and Samuel Coleridge. They typify writers who explored the Supernatural in their work.
Sir. Walter Scott’s hero, Ivanhoe and his work, Marmion (1800) place Scott’s work as some of the finest Romantic literature of the late-19th Century. The following excerpt from Marion, is often quoted in part:
“Yet Clare's sharp questions must I shun
Must separate Constance from the nun
Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
A Palmer too! No wonder why
I felt rebuked beneath his eye.”
In William Tell (1804), German dramatist Friedrich von Schiller brings the legend of a medieval Swiss mountaineer to life as a symbol of opposition to tyranny and colonization.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic tales and poetry are full of themes of melancholy, grief, and horror. Poe combined styles of work that had not been brought together before. He romanticizes horror, and enters the distorted mind of his characters, allowing his readers to see into the dark side of human nature.
Romanticism elevated the place of the common person in literature, and focused attention on issues, conditions, and the plight of humanity as never before in literature.
Today, in honor of William Wordsworth’s birthday (April 7, 1770), a poet who is considered partly responsible for the birth of Romanticism, his poem, Tinturn Abbey (written on the banks of the River Wye):
"Tintern Abbey"
FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. -- Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: -- feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: -- that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, --
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft --
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart --
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all. -- I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. -- That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, -- both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance --
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence -- wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love -- oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
[Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,
On Revisiting The Banks Of The Wye
During A Tour. July 13, 1798.]
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