characteristics of romanticism essay

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

• Romanticism

Théodore Gericault

Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct

Alfred Dedreux (1810–1860) as a Child

The Start of the Race of the Riderless Horses

Horace Vernet

Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Gericault (1791–1824)

Inundated Ruins of a Monastery

Karl Blechen

Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds

John Constable

Eugène Delacroix

Royal Tiger

Stormy Coast Scene after a Shipwreck

French Painter

Mother and Child by the Sea

Johan Christian Dahl

The Natchez

Wanderer in the Storm

Julius von Leypold

The Abduction of Rebecca

Jewish Woman of Algiers Seated on the Ground

Théodore Chassériau

The Virgin Adoring the Host

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Ovid among the Scythians

Kathryn Calley Galitz Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. Though often posited in opposition to Neoclassicism , early Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques Louis David’s studio, including Baron Antoine Jean Gros, Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson, and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. This blurring of stylistic boundaries is best expressed in Ingres’ Apotheosis of Homer and Eugène Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus (both Museé du Louvre, Paris), which polarized the public at the Salon of 1827 in Paris. While Ingres’ work seemingly embodied the ordered classicism of David in contrast to the disorder and tumult of Delacroix, in fact both works draw from the Davidian tradition but each ultimately subverts that model, asserting the originality of the artist—a central notion of Romanticism.

In Romantic art, nature—with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes—offered an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. The violent and terrifying images of nature conjured by Romantic artists recall the eighteenth-century aesthetic of the Sublime. As articulated by the British statesman Edmund Burke in a 1757 treatise and echoed by the French philosopher Denis Diderot a decade later, “all that stuns the soul, all that imprints a feeling of terror, leads to the sublime.” In French and British painting of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the recurrence of images of shipwrecks ( 2003.42.56 ) and other representations of man’s struggle against the awesome power of nature manifest this sensibility. Scenes of shipwrecks culminated in 1819 with Théodore Gericault’s strikingly original Raft of the Medusa (Louvre), based on a contemporary event. In its horrifying explicitness, emotional intensity, and conspicuous lack of a hero, The Raft of the Medusa became an icon of the emerging Romantic style. Similarly, J. M. W. Turner’s 1812 depiction of Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps (Tate, London), in which the general and his troops are dwarfed by the overwhelming scale of the landscape and engulfed in the swirling vortex of snow, embodies the Romantic sensibility in landscape painting. Gericault also explored the Romantic landscape in a series of views representing different times of day; in Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct ( 1989.183 ), the dramatic sky, blasted tree, and classical ruins evoke a sense of melancholic reverie.

Another facet of the Romantic attitude toward nature emerges in the landscapes of John Constable , whose art expresses his response to his native English countryside. For his major paintings, Constable executed full-scale sketches, as in a view of Salisbury Cathedral ( 50.145.8 ); he wrote that a sketch represents “nothing but one state of mind—that which you were in at the time.” When his landscapes were exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1824, critics and artists embraced his art as “nature itself.” Constable’s subjective, highly personal view of nature accords with the individuality that is a central tenet of Romanticism.

This interest in the individual and subjective—at odds with eighteenth-century rationalism—is mirrored in the Romantic approach to portraiture. Traditionally, records of individual likeness, portraits became vehicles for expressing a range of psychological and emotional states in the hands of Romantic painters. Gericault probed the extremes of mental illness in his portraits of psychiatric patients, as well as the darker side of childhood in his unconventional portrayals of children. In his portrait of Alfred Dedreux ( 41.17 ), a young boy of about five or six, the child appears intensely serious, more adult than childlike, while the dark clouds in the background convey an unsettling, ominous quality.

Such explorations of emotional states extended into the animal kingdom, marking the Romantic fascination with animals as both forces of nature and metaphors for human behavior. This curiosity is manifest in the sketches of wild animals done in the menageries of Paris and London in the 1820s by artists such as Delacroix, Antoine-Louis Barye, and Edwin Landseer. Gericault depicted horses of all breeds—from workhorses to racehorses—in his work. Lord Byron’s 1819 tale of Mazeppa tied to a wild horse captivated Romantic artists from Delacroix to Théodore Chassériau, who exploited the violence and passion inherent in the story. Similarly, Horace Vernet, who exhibited two scenes from Mazeppa in the Salon of 1827 (both Musée Calvet, Avignon), also painted the riderless horse race that marked the end of the Roman Carnival, which he witnessed during his 1820 visit to Rome. His oil sketch ( 87.15.47 ) captures the frenetic energy of the spectacle, just before the start of the race. Images of wild, unbridled animals evoked primal states that stirred the Romantic imagination.

Along with plumbing emotional and behavioral extremes, Romantic artists expanded the repertoire of subject matter, rejecting the didacticism of Neoclassical history painting in favor of imaginary and exotic subjects. Orientalism and the worlds of literature stimulated new dialogues with the past as well as the present. Ingres’ sinuous odalisques ( 38.65 ) reflect the contemporary fascination with the exoticism of the harem, albeit a purely imagined Orient, as he never traveled beyond Italy. In 1832, Delacroix journeyed to Morocco, and his trip to North Africa prompted other artists to follow. In 1846, Chassériau documented his visit to Algeria in notebooks filled with watercolors and drawings, which later served as models for paintings done in his Paris studio ( 64.188 ). Literature offered an alternative form of escapism. The novels of Sir Walter Scott, the poetry of Lord Byron, and the drama of Shakespeare transported art to other worlds and eras. Medieval England is the setting of Delacroix’s tumultuous Abduction of Rebecca ( 03.30 ), which illustrates an episode from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe .

In its stylistic diversity and range of subjects, Romanticism defies simple categorization. As the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1846, “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling.”

Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “Romanticism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Brookner, Anita. Romanticism and Its Discontents . New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux; : , 2000.

Honour, Hugh. Romanticism . New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Additional Essays by Kathryn Calley Galitz

• Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ The Legacy of Jacques Louis David (1748–1825) .” (October 2004)
• Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) .” (May 2009)
• Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ The French Academy in Rome .” (October 2003)

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10 Key Characteristics of Romanticism in Literature

• DESCRIPTION characteristics of romanticism represented by woman's dress
• SOURCE Tony Marturano / iStock / Getty Images

Understanding the characteristics of Romanticism in literature can help you become a better reader, and it can give you a leg up on literary essays and discussions. This period in literary history is fascinating and dramatic, and once you know the telltale signs, you’ll be able to identify work that typifies it.

What Is Romanticism in Literature?

Popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Romanticism was a literary movement that emphasized nature and the importance of emotion and artistic freedom. In many ways, writers of this era were rebelling against the attempt to explain the world and human nature through science and the lens of the Industrial Revolution. In Romanticism, emotion is much more powerful than rational thought.

What Are the Characteristics of Romanticism in Literature?

Although literary Romanticism occurred from about 1790 through 1850, not all writers of this period worked in this style. There are certain characteristics that make a piece of literature part of the Romantic movement. You won’t find every characteristic present in every piece of Romantic literature; however, you will usually find that writing from this period has several of the key characteristics.

1. Glorification of Nature

Nature, in all its unbound glory, plays a huge role in Romantic literature. Nature, sometimes seen as the opposite of the rational, is a powerful symbol in work from this era. Romantic poets and writers give personal, deep descriptions of nature and its wild and powerful qualities.

Natural elements also work as symbols for the unfettered emotions of the poet or writer, as in the final stanza of “ To Autumn ” by John Keats. Keats was aware that he was dying of consumption throughout much of his short life and career, and his celebration of autumn symbolizes the beauty in the ephemeral.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

2. Awareness and Acceptance of Emotions

A focus on emotion is a key characteristic of nearly all writing from the Romantic period. When you read work of this period, you’ll see feelings described in all forms, including romantic and filial love, fear, sorrow, loneliness, and more. This focus on emotion offered a counterpoint to the rational, and it also made Romantic poetry and prose extremely readable and relatable.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein offers a perfect example of this characteristic of Romanticism. Here, Frankenstein’s monster shows great self-awareness of his feelings and offers a vivid emotional description full of anger and sadness.

I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter and stupid despair. My protectors had departed and had broken the only link that held me to the world. For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends, of the mild voice of De Lacey, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the exquisite beauty of the Arabian, these thoughts vanished and a gush of tears somewhat soothed me. But again when I reflected that they had spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger, and unable to injure anything human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects. As night advanced I placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage, and after having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden, I waited with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my operations.

3. Celebration of Artistic Creativity and Imagination

In contrast to the previous generations’ focus on reason, writers of the Romantic movement explored the importance of imagination and the creative impulse. Romantic poets and prose writers celebrated the power of imagination and the creative process, as well as the artistic viewpoint. They believed that artists and writers looked at the world differently, and they celebrated that vision in their work.

You can see this in William Wordsworth’s poem, “ The Prelude ."

Imagination—here the Power so called Through sad incompetence of human speech, That awful Power rose from the mind’s abyss Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps, At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost; Halted without an effort to break through; But to my conscious soul I now can say— “I recognise thy glory:” in such strength Of usurpation, when the light of sense Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed The invisible world….

4. Emphasis on Aesthetic Beauty

Romantic literature also explores the theme of aesthetic beauty, not just of nature but of people as well. This was especially true with descriptions of female beauty. Writers praised women of the Romantic era for their natural loveliness, rather than anything artificial or constrained.

A classic example of this characteristic is George Gordon, or Lord Byron’s, poem “ She Walks in Beauty ."

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

5. Themes of Solitude

Writers of the Romantic era believed that creative inspiration came from solitary exploration. They celebrated the feeling of being alone, whether that meant loneliness or a much-needed quiet space to think and create.

You’ll see solitary themes in many literary works from this period, including in this excerpt from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “ Frost at Midnight ."

The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully …

6. Focus on Exoticism and History

Romantic-era literature often has a distinct focus on exotic locations and events or items from history. Poems and prose touch on antiques and the gifts of ancient cultures around the world, and far-away locations provide the setting for some literary works of this era.

One great example is Percy Byssche Shelley’s poem “ Ozymandias ."

I met a traveler from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

7. Spiritual and Supernatural Elements

The writers of the Romantic era did not turn away from the darker side of emotion and the mysteries of the supernatural. They explored the contrast between life and death. Many pieces have Gothic motifs , such as manor houses in disrepair, dark and stormy nights, and more.

Some of the supernatural elements serve as symbols for emotions of guilt, depression, and other darker feelings, as you can see in this excerpt from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth --in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated --an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit-an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.

8. Vivid Sensory Descriptions

Another essential characteristic of nearly all Romantic-era literature is vivid sensory descriptions. The poems and prose of this period include examples of simile and metaphor, as well as visual imagery and other sensory details. Poets and other writers went beyond simply telling about things and instead gave the information readers need to feel and taste and touch the objects and surroundings in Romantic-era writing.

Wordsworth uses vivid descriptions, including similes and metaphors, in his famous poem, “ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud ."

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze …

9. Use of Personification

Romantic poets and prose writers also used personification in their work. You can see examples of personification of everything from birds and animals to natural events or aspects. These works even personify feelings like love or states like death.

You can see Romantic personification in the work of the famous naturalist and writer, Karl von Martius. Here is an excerpt about the trees of the Amazon from his book Flora Brasiliensis .

I am impelled by some inner urge to tell you, gentle reader, these thoughts of my mind, since I am presenting to your eyes a picture of those most ancient trees which I once saw beside the Amazon River. Even today, after many years have gone by, I feel myself struck by the appearance of those giants of great age, in the same way as by the face of some giant human being. Even today those trees speak to me and fill my spirit with a certain pious fear, even today they excite in my breast that silent wonder with which my spirit was held at that time. This wonder is like a broad and deep river; the thoughts of the human mind are its waves; not all feelings of the heart are to be expressed with words....

10. Focus on the Self and Autobiography

Many works of Romantic-era literature are deeply personal, and they often explore the self of the writer. You’ll see autobiographical influences in poems and prose of the period. One characteristic of this movement was the importance placed on feelings and creativity, and the source of much of this emotional and artistic work was the background and real-life surroundings of the writer. This self-focus preceded confessional poetry of the mid-1900s, but you can see its profound influence on that movement.

One key example of Romantic autobiography is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions . In this work, he endeavored to create an unvarnished look at his own upbringing and life.

I have begun on a work which is without precedent, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. I propose to set before my fellow-mortals a man in all the truth of nature; and this man shall be myself. I have studied mankind and know my heart; I am not made like any one I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mold in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read.

Key Poetic Forms of Romanticism

If you are studying poetry of the Romantic era, it’s helpful to know the forms that were popular during this time. These included odes, sonnets and lyrics. Take a look at examples of odes by Romantic poets like Keats, as well as sonnet examples by the likes of Percy Shelley. Understanding these poetic forms and their relationship to Romanticism will give you a deeper appreciation of this work.

Romanticism in Literature: Definition and Examples

Finding beauty in nature and the common man.

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Romanticism was a literary movement that began in the late 18th century and ended around the middle of the 19th century—although its influence continues to this day. Marked by a focus on the individual (and the unique perspective of a person, often guided by irrational, emotional impulses), a respect for nature and the primitive, and a celebration of the common man, Romanticism can be seen as a reaction to the huge changes in society that occurred during this period, including the revolutions that burned through countries like France and the United States, ushering in grand experiments in democracy.

Key Takeaways: Romanticism in Literature

• Romanticism is a literary movement spanning roughly 1790–1850.
• The movement was characterized by a celebration of nature and the common man, a focus on individual experience, an idealization of women, and an embrace of isolation and melancholy.
• Prominent Romantic writers include John Keats, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley.

Romanticism Definition

The term Romanticism does not stem directly from the concept of love, but rather the French word romaunt (a romantic story told in verse). Romanticism focused on emotions and the inner life of the writer, and often used autobiographical material to inform the work or even provide a template for it, unlike traditional literature at the time.

Romanticism celebrated primitive and elevated "regular people" as being deserving of celebration, which was an innovation at the time. Romanticism also fixated on nature as a primordial force and encouraged the concept of isolation as necessary for spiritual and artistic development.

Characteristics of Romanticism

Romantic literature is marked by six primary characteristics: celebration of nature, focus on the individual and spirituality, celebration of isolation and melancholy, interest in the common man, idealization of women, and personification and pathetic fallacy.

Celebration of Nature

Romantic writers saw nature as a teacher and a source of infinite beauty. One of the most famous works of Romanticism is John Keats’ To Autumn (1820):

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,– While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

Keats personifies the season and follows its progression from the initial arrival after summer, through the harvest season, and finally to autumn’s end as winter takes its place.

Focus on the Individual and Spirituality

Romantic writers turned inward, valuing the individual experience above all else. This in turn led to a heightened sense of spirituality in Romantic work, and the addition of occult and supernatural elements.

The work of Edgar Allan Poe exemplifies this aspect of the movement; for example, The Raven tells the story of a man grieving for his dead love (an idealized woman in the Romantic tradition) when a seemingly sentient Raven arrives and torments him, which can be interpreted literally or seen as a manifestation of his mental instability.

Celebration of Isolation and Melancholy

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a very influential writer in Romanticism; his books of essays explored many of the themes of the literary movement and codified them. His 1841 essay Self-Reliance is a seminal work of Romantic writing in which he exhorts the value of looking inward and determining your own path, and relying on only your own resources.

Related to the insistence on isolation, melancholy is a key feature of many works of Romanticism, usually seen as a reaction to inevitable failure—writers wished to express the pure beauty they perceived and failure to do so adequately resulted in despair like the sort expressed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in A Lament :

O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb. Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more—Oh, never more!

Interest in the Common Man

William Wordsworth was one of the first poets to embrace the concept of writing that could be read, enjoyed, and understood by anyone. He eschewed overly stylized language and references to classical works in favor of emotional imagery conveyed in simple, elegant language, as in his most famous poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud :

I wandered lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o'er vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden Daffodils; Beside the Lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Idealization of Women

In works such as Poe’s The Raven , women were always presented as idealized love interests, pure and beautiful, but usually without anything else to offer. Ironically, the most notable novels of the period were written by women (Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Mary Shelley, for example), but had to be initially published under male pseudonyms because of these attitudes. Much Romantic literature is infused with the concept of women being perfect innocent beings to be adored, mourned, and respected—but never touched or relied upon.

Personification and Pathetic Fallacy

Romantic literature’s fixation on nature is characterized by the heavy use of both personification and pathetic fallacy. Mary Shelley used these techniques to great effect in Frankenstein :

Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.

Romanticism continues to influence literature today; Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight novels are clear descendants of the movement, incorporating most of the characteristics of classic Romanticism despite being published a century and a half after the end of the movement’s active life.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. " Romanticism ."

Cambridge University Press. " The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism ."

Poetry Foundation. " William Wordsworth ."

University of Florida. " Romantic Myth Making: The Sympathetic Soulmate From Romanticism to Twilight and Beyond ."

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Europe 1800 - 1900

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British Romanticism

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“[I]f Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all,” proposed John Keats in an 1818 letter, at the age of 22. This could be called  romantic  in sentiment, lowercase  r , meaning fanciful, impractical, unachievably ambitious. But Keats’s axiom could also be taken as a one-sentence distillation of British Romanticism—with its all-or-nothing stance on the spontaneity of the highest art, its conviction of the sympathetic connections between nature’s organic growth and human creativity, and its passion for individual imagination as an originating force. This period is generally mapped from the first political and poetic tremors of the 1780s to the 1832 Reform Act. No major period in English-language literary history is shorter than that half-century of the Romantic era, but few other eras have ever proved as consequential. Romanticism was nothing short of a revolution in how poets understood their art, its provenance, and its powers: ever since, English-language poets have furthered that revolution or formulated reactions against it.

In Britain, Romanticism was not a single unified movement, consolidated around any one person, place, moment, or manifesto, and the various schools, styles, and stances we now label  capital-R Romantic  would resist being lumped into one clear category. Yet all of Romanticism’s products exploded out of the same set of contexts: some were a century in the making; others were overnight upheavals. Ushered in by revolutions in the United States (1776) and France (1789), the Romantic period coincides with the societal transformations of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of liberal movements and the state’s counterrevolutionary measures, and the voicing of radical ideas—Parliamentary reform, expanded suffrage, abolitionism, atheism—in pamphlets and public demonstrations. Though Britain avoided an actual revolution, political tensions sporadically broke out into traumatizing violence, as in the Peterloo massacre of 1819, in which state cavalry killed at least 10 peaceful demonstrators and wounded hundreds more.

Emboldened by the era’s revolutionary spirit, Romantic poets invented new literary forms to match. Romantic poetry can argue radical ideas explicitly and vehemently (as in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “England in 1819,” a sonnet in protest of Peterloo) or allegorically and ambivalently (as in William Blake’s “The Tyger,” from  Songs of Innocence and of Experience ). To quote from William Wordsworth’s preface to  Lyrical Ballads,  the groundbreaking collection he wrote with fellow poet-critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Romantic poets could “choose incidents and situations from common life” as its subjects, describing them not in polished or high-flown diction but instead in everyday speech, “a selection of language really used by men.” Romanticism can do justice to the disadvantaged, to those marginalized or forgotten by an increasingly urban and commercial culture—rural workers, children, the poor, the elderly, or the disabled—or it can testify to individuality simply by foregrounding the poet’s own subjectivity at its most idiosyncratic or experimental.

Alongside prevailing political and social ideas, Romantic poets put into practice new aesthetic theories, cobbled from British and German philosophy, which opposed the neoclassicism and rigid decorum of 18th-century poetry. To borrow the central dichotomy of critic M.H. Abrams’s influential book  The Mirror and the Lamp  (1953), Romantic poets broke from the past by no longer producing artistic works that merely mirrored or reflected nature faithfully; instead, they fashioned poems that served as lamps illuminating truths through self-expression, casting the poets’ subjective, even impressionistic, experiences onto the world. From philosophers such as Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, the Romantics inherited a distinction between two aesthetic categories, the beautiful and the sublime—in which  beautiful  suggests smallness, clarity, and painless pleasure, and  sublime  suggests boundlessness, obscurity, and imagination-stretching grandeur. From the German critic A.W. Schlegel, Coleridge developed his ideal of “organic form,” the unity found in artworks whose parts are interdependent and integral to the whole—grown, like a natural organism, according to innate processes, not externally mandated formulas.

The most self-conscious and self-critical British poets to date, the Romantics justified their poetic experimentations in a variety of prose genres (prefaces, reviews, essays, diaries, letters, works of autobiography or philosophy) or else inside the poetry itself. But they never wrote only for other poets and critics: the Romantics competed in a burgeoning literary marketplace that made room for the revival of English and Scottish ballads (narrative folk songs, transcribed and disseminated in print), the recovery of medieval romances (one etymological root of  Romantic ), and prose fiction ranging from the psychological extremes of the gothic novel to the wit of Jane Austen’s social realism. Romantic poets looked curiously backward—to Greek mythology, friezes, and urns or to a distinctly British cultural past of medieval ruins and tales of knights and elves—to look speculatively forward. Perhaps no pre-Romantic author inspired the Romantics more than William Shakespeare, who exemplified what Keats termed “ Negative Capability , that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” For Keats, “a great poet” such as Shakespeare opened his imagination to all possibilities, limited neither by an insistent search for truth nor by his own egocentric gravity: “the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.”

Drawing on unrestrained imagination and a variegated cultural landscape, a Romantic-era poem could be trivial or fantastic, succinctly songlike or digressively meandering, a searching fragment or a precisely bounded sonnet or ode, as comic as Lord Byron’s mock epic  Don Juan  or as cosmologically subversive as Blake’s  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell . If any single innovation has emerged as Romanticism’s foremost legacy, it is the dominance among poetic genres of the lyric poem, spoken in first-person (the lyric  I ) often identified with the poet, caught between passion and reason, finding correspondences in natural surroundings for the introspective workings of heart and mind. If any collection cemented that legacy, it would be Wordsworth and Coleridge’s landmark collection  Lyrical Ballads , first published anonymously in 1798. The collection provokes with its title alone, inverting hierarchies, hybridizing the exalted outbursts of lyric poetry with the folk narratives of ballads. In a retrospective preface added for the 1800 second edition and expanded in later editions, Wordsworth set out his polemical program for a poetry grounded in feeling, supplying Romanticism with some of its most resonant and lasting phrases: “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”; “it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”

The following poems, poets, articles, poem guides, and recordings offer introductory samples of the Romantic era. Included are the monumental Romantic poets often nicknamed “the Big Six”—the older generation of Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge and the so-called Young Romantics—Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Indispensable women poets such as Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, and Felicia Dorothea Hemans; the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns; and the farm laborer–poet John Clare are also represented. But even this collection is only a beginning: no introduction to Romanticism can encompass the entire period in all its variety and restless experimentation.

• William Blake
• William Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Lord Byron (George Gordon)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Mary Robinson
• Robert Southey
• Sir Walter Scott
• Anna Lætitia Barbauld
• Dorothy Wordsworth
• Walter Savage Landor
• Thomas Chatterton
• Charlotte Smith
• Felicia Dorothea Hemans
• Robert Burns
• Charles Lamb
• Letitia Elizabeth Landon
• Charlotte Richardson
• George Crabbe
• Hannah More
• Hartley Coleridge
• Observations Prefixed to Lyrical Ballads
• from “On Poetry in General”
• Selections from Keats’s Letters
• A Defence of Poetry
• from Biographia Literaria , Chapter XIV
• William Wordsworth 101
• John Keats: Selections
• William Blake 101
• Lightning Strikes Twice
• Keats and King Lear
• Keats in Space
• A Little Society
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• Ode to the West Wind
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (text of 1834)
• The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young
• I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
• Ode to a Nightingale
• Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
• Don Juan : Dedication
• Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni
• A Red, Red Rose
• She Walks in Beauty
• from The Prelude: Book 1: Childhood and School-time
• Tam O 'Shanter
• The Book of Thel
• The Rights of Women
• from Endymion
• Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
• Huge Vapours Brood above the Clifted Shore
• The Sick Rose
• So We'll Go No More a Roving
• This Lime-tree Bower my Prison
• When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be
• To a Skylark
• John Keats: “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
• John Clare: “To John Clare”
• John Keats: “La Belle Dame sans Merci”
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Frost at Midnight”
• Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ozymandias”
• John Keats: “To Autumn”
• Percy Bysshe Shelley: “England in 1819”
• This Poet Never Gets Old
• Fact-Checking John Keats
• The Cure for Romanticism?
• I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud ("Daffodils")
• Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period
• Stanford Guide to Romantic Aesthetics
• The Romantics at the British Library
• British Women Romantic Poets at Calisphere
• Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry
• Romantic Circles Journal
• The MET’s Timeline of Art History: Romanticism
• The William Blake Archive
• Wordsworth Museum and Dove Cottage
• Keats Letters Project
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6.1: The Romantic Period (1798–1832)

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Learning Objectives

• Trace the political and philosophical roots of Romanticism.
• Compare and contrast neoclassicism and Romanticism.
• List and define characteristics of Romanticism.
• Explain the significance of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s 1798  Lyrical Ballads , and outline the major tenets of Wordsworth’s 1802 Preface to  Lyrical Ballads .
• List, define, and give examples of typical forms of Romantic literature.

The Roots of Romanticism

Tintern Abbey and the River Wye in Tintern, Wales.

Often the term  Romantic  literature, particularly poetry, evokes the connotation of nature poetry. Although nature is an important component in much Romantic literature, Romanticism is much more than recording the beauties of the natural world. And  Romanticism  is certainly not what modern readers usually think of when we hear the words  romance  and  romantic ; Romanticism does not refer to romantic love.

Romanticism  grew from a profound change in the way people in the Western world perceived their place and purpose in life. Events such as the American Revolution in 1776, the  French Revolution  in 1789, and the  Industrial Revolution  restructured society and the way individuals viewed themselves and their relationship to each other and to the social order.

In the late 18th and early 19th century, concepts such as the Great Chain of Being, which had long represented the way humans thought of themselves and their roles in society, crumbled in the wake of new ideas about democracy. Rather than placing themselves above or below other individuals in a hierarchy, people began to believe that all men are created equal. Although it took more time to be accepted, the idea that women and people of color are also created equal germinated in the fertile environment of democratic ideals.

Nature and Spirit

European philosophers such as  Rousseau  and  Spinoza  maintain that innocence and the potential for human goodness are found in nature; human institutions, such as governments, produce pride, greed, and inequality. Thus nature, and people close to nature, becomes the ideal for Romantic writers.

Nature takes on additional significance with the ideas of philosophers such as  Schelling  who posits an identity of mind and nature: “Nature is visible spirit.…” For poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, nature is a source of divine revelation, a visible veil through which God may be discerned. For others such as Shelley, nature is the means to tapping into the collective power of the human mind, what American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson refers to as the Over-Soul. Nature is the source of human innocence and goodness because nature is a manifestation of the Divine.

For Romantic writers, then, the source of poetry is not a conscious crafting of lines of a certain number of syllables in a certain metrical pattern and rhyme scheme, like the 18th-century heroic couplet. Instead, the source of literature is the inspiration that comes from connecting, through nature, with the divine or the transcendental properties of the human mind. Romantic writers use the term  Imagination  to refer to this connection. The power of God to create nature is parallel to the poet’s power to create through the Imagination. In his  A Defence of Poetry , Percy Bysshe Shelley states that the Imagination “strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.” In his “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth writes of “A motion and a spirit, that impels / All thinking things…” that he finds in nature. In his “The Eolian Harp,” Coleridge pictures all of nature, including humans, as harps creating music when touched by the breeze of Imagination, the “One life” that is “in us and abroad.”

Sturm und Drang

One facet of Romanticism also recognizes the dark side of the human mind. Originating in Germany, the  Sturm und Drang  (usually translated “storm and stress”) movement pictures an anti-hero, a character dark in appearance, mood, and thought, in rebellion against the restrictions of society.  Ann Radcliffe  and others wrote  Gothic novels  that typically feature picturesque yet haunted medieval castles and ruins, supernatural elements, death, madness, and terror. Gothic elements appear in many Romantic works: Heathcliff and the ghost of Catherine in Emily Brontë’s  Wuthering Heights , the mad wife in Charlotte Brontë’s  Jane Eyre , Mary Shelley’s  Frankenstein . Jane Austen’s  Northanger Abbey  delightfully parodies the Gothic novel. In poetry, Byron’s narrative poems feature dark, brooding anti-heroes called Byronic heroes, a role Byron played himself in his personal life. The Tate Britain provides  an online tour  through a previous exhibit of paintings that illustrate Romantic Gothic art.

Romanticism and Neoclassicism

Romanticism is a reaction against many facets of Neoclassicism. The following chart lists contrasting views of Neoclassicism and Romanticism.

Characteristics of Romantic Literature

• medievalism —Rather than looking for forms and subject matter from classical literature, Romantic-era writers prefer nostalgic views of the Middle Ages as a simple, less complicated time not troubled by the complexities and divisive issues of industrialization and urbanization. Often a Romantic medieval vision is not realistic, ignoring the violence and harshness of the Middle Ages with its religious persecution, political wars, poverty among the lower classes in favor of a fairy tale view of knights in shining armor rescuing beautiful damsels in distress. Or, from another perspective, the castles and mysterious aura of the so-called Dark Ages provide an ideal setting for Gothic literature.
• mysticism —Romantic mysticism is the belief that the physical world of nature is a revelation of a spiritual or transcendental presence in the universe. Mysticism is not pantheism (worshipping nature). Romantic writers would worship not the tree, but the spiritual, sublime element manifested by the tree. Romantic literature, particularly poetry, is often characterized as nature poetry; mysticism explains the evident love of nature. Romantic writers love nature not only for its beauty but primarily because it is an expression of spirituality and the Imagination.
• sensibility —When Jane Austen titled her novel  Sense and Sensibility , she set up the dichotomy between rationalism and the emotional enthusiasm that was a reaction, often an exaggerated reaction, to the reason and logic prized in neoclassicism. In his  Preface to Lyrical Ballads , Wordsworth defined poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” The overwhelming emotional reaction to nature seen in Wordsworth’s poetry, the emotional sensitivity to other individuals and their circumstances, particularly those from the lower socio-economic classes, and the supernatural evocation of terror in Gothic literature all are expressions of sensibility.
• primitivism and individualism —Arising from two sources, philosophical theories that posit innocence is found in nature and the ideals of democracy, Romanticism values the primitive individual, the person who does not have the artificial manners of high society, the cultivated façade of the aristocracy. Individuals who are closer to nature are better able to recognize and exemplify goodness and spiritual discernment. Wordsworth espouses the common man and incidents from ordinary life as the appropriate subject for poetry. Romanticism places the individual in the center of life and experience.

Lyrical Ballads

Lyrical Ballads  is a collection of poems written and jointly published by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798. The volume is of such importance that its 1798 publication date is often considered the beginning of the Romantic Period. The poetry in  Lyrical Ballads  marks a distinct change in both subject matter and style from the poetry of the 18th century.

William Wordsworth’s Preface to  Lyrical Ballads

In the 1802 edition of  Lyrical Ballads  Wordsworth includes a  Preface , an introductory explanation, to  Lyrical Ballads  to explain his theory of how poetry should be written.

The following points from the Preface delineate the characteristics that make these poems markedly different from poetry of the preceding century:

The language of poetry should be real language spoken by common people.

During the 18th century, many poets used what Wordsworth called “poetic diction,” flowery or ornate words for ordinary things such as feathery flock instead of birds or finny tribe instead of fish. Wordsworth protests that people don’t use such expressions; therefore poetry shouldn’t either. Notice also that much of Wordsworth’s poetry rejects the uniform stanzas and line lengths that were popular in the 18th century. Much of his poetry is free in form—lines and stanzas of varying lengths in the same poem, more like the “selection of language really used by men.”

The subject of poetry should be events from the real lives of common people.

Wordsworth believes that common, ordinary situations are worthy topics for poems, events such as farmers plowing their fields. He further believes that through the Imagination he could make his audience more aware of the significance of common scenes that they might otherwise take for granted.

• “ All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings ” and “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Thus Wordsworth identifies sensibility rather than reason as the source of poetry.
• A poet is a “man speaking to men” but an individual who is extraordinarily perceptive.  Wordsworth believes that the power of the Imagination enables poets to perceive the spiritual dimension found in the ordinary, in, as Coleridge says, all of animate nature. Sensibility allows the poet to understand and to convey the inner being of man and nature.

Forms of Literature

A  novel , as famously defined in the Holman/Harmon  Handbook to Literature , is an “extended fictional prose narrative.” The novel flourished in the Romantic Period, encompassing novels previously listed by Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Mary Shelley, and Ann Radcliffe;  Sir Walter Scott ‘s historical novels, known as the Waverly Novels, set in medieval times and glorifying Scottish nationalism; and Jane Austen’s novels of manners, portraying the genteel country life of the Regency era.

Lyric Poetry

A  lyric  is a brief poem, expressing emotion, imagination, and meditative thought, usually stanzaic in form.

Romantic Ode

As used in the Romantic Period, the  ode  is a lyric poem longer than usual lyrics, often on a more serious topic, usually meditative and philosophic in tone and subject.

A  ballad  is a narrative poem or song. Ballads originated as songs that were part of an oral culture, usually simple and regular in rhythm and rhyme. The typical ballad stanza is 4 lines rhyming abab. Because of their simplicity and their role as part of folk culture, ballads were popular with many Romantic writers.

Key Takeaways

• Romanticism grew from a political and philosophical milieu which promoted democracy, equated nature and spirit, and valued sensibility over reason.
• Lyrical Ballads , published in 1798, is often considered the beginning of the Romantic period because Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s poetry marks a distinct change in form and subject matter from neoclassical poetry.
• In his Preface to the 1802 edition of  Lyrical Ballads , Wordsworth delineates the principles that define Romanticism and distinguish Romantic poetry from neoclassical poetry.
• Important forms of Romantic literature are the novel, lyric poetry, odes, and ballads.

General Information

• British Women Romantic Poets 1789–1832 . University of California, Davis. an electronic collection of texts.
• “ Nineteenth-Century Literature .”  Literary History.com . Jan Pridmore.
• Romantic Circles . Neil Fraistat and Steven E. Jones, editors. University of Maryland.
• “ Romanticism .”  I Hear America Singing . Profiles: Artists, Movements, Ideas. Thomas Hampson. PBS.
• “ Romanticism .” Lilia Melani. English Department. Brooklyn College. City University of New York.
• Women Poets of the Romantic Period 1770–1839 . Special Collections. University Libraries. University of Colorado at Boulder.

French Revolution

• “ The French Revolution .”  The National Archives .

Industrial Revolution

• “ 1770s .” English Language and Literature Timeline. British Library.
• “ The British Industrial Revolution .” Pamela E. Mack. Clemson University.
• “ Child Labor .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody. Hartwick College.
• “ The Life of the Industrial Worker in Nineteenth-Century England .”  The Victorian Web . Laura Del Col. West Virginia University.

Gothic Novels

• “ Ann Radcliffe: An Evaluation .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody. Hartwick College.
• “ Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake, and the Romantic Imagination .” Tate Britain. images of paintings in the Tate Britain museum displayed for an exhibit on Romantic Gothic art.
• Mary Shelley’s Hand-Written Draft of Frankenstein .  Shelley’s Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family . Bodleian Libraries. Oxford University Exhibit in partnership with the New York Public Library. virtual book with turnable pages and slideshow.
• “ Sublime Anxiety: The Gothic Family and The Outsider .” University of Virginia Library.
• “ Lyrical Ballads .” Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum. Wordsworth Trust.
• “ Lyric .”  Literary Terms and Definitions . Dr. L. Kip Wheeler. Carson-Newman College.
• “ Lyric .”  The UVic Writer’s Guide . The Department of English. University of Victoria.
• “ The Meditative Romantic Ode .” Lilia Melani. English Department. Brooklyn College. City University of New York.
• “ Novel .”  The UVic Writer’s Guide . The Department of English. University of Victoria.
• “ Ode .”  Literary Terms and Definitions . Dr. L. Kip Wheeler. Carson-Newman College.
• “ Ode .”  The UVic Writer’s Guide . The Department of English. University of Victoria.

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Romanticism summary

Romanticism , Literary, artistic, and philosophical movement that began in Europe in the 18th century and lasted roughly until the mid-19th century. In its intense focus on the individual consciousness, it was both a continuation of and a reaction against the Enlightenment . Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental. Among its attitudes were a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect; a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality; a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure; a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator; an emphasis on imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth; a consuming interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era; and a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic. See also classicism and Transcendentalism.

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Romanticism Characteristics: What Are They?

Hannah Yang

The Romantic Era is one of the key movements in the history of English literature. It includes many of the literary works that we still read and love today, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Herman Melville's Moby Dick .

This article will define the Romantic period and describe ten of the most important characteristics of Romanticism in English literature.

What is the Romantic Movement?

Who were the most influential writers of the romantic period, what are the characteristics of romanticism, how has romantic literature affected our literature today.

The term “Romantic literature” might sound like it has something to do with romance, but it actually refers to something else entirely.

The word "romantic" can be used to describe love stories in any culture or time period, while the word "Romantic" with a capital "R" describes a literary movement from the 18th and 19th centuries. You could sit down at your desk right now and write romantic poetry, but you couldn't write Romantic poetry without the help of a time machine.

The Romantic period, also known as Romanticism, was an intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that took place in Europe and America around 1780-1850.

European Romanticism began as a reaction to the ways in which the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment had transformed society.

The Enlightenment had prioritized reason and rationality over emotion and creativity. The Industrial Revolution had urbanized England. Technology was booming, science was accelerating, and cities were becoming increasingly crowded.

As a result of these changes, many people felt like humanity was losing its relationship with the natural world and the sublime.

Along came the Romanticists: a group of artists, writers, and intellectuals who celebrated nature, emotion, and the spiritual. They criticized the way society had changed and glorified the past in their work.

One of the most powerful things about literature is that it holds up a mirror to the society that it was written in. Europe and America changed drastically in the late-18th century, and the Romantic Era was a reaction to the societal issues of the time.

Important Romantic poets include William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry David Thoreau, William Blake, John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Emily Dickinson, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Important fiction writers from the Romantic era include Emily Brontë ( Wuthering Heights ), Charlotte Brontë ( Jane Eyre ), Mary Shelley ( Frankenstein ), Herman Melville ( Moby Dick ), James Fenimore Cooper ( The Last of the Mohicans ), and Nathaniel Hawthorne ( The Scarlet Letter ).

Central features of the Romantic era include:

• Emotion and passion
• The critique of progress
• A return to the past
• An awe of nature
• The idealization of women
• The purity of childhood
• The search for subjective truth
• The celebration of the individual
• A break from convention
• Spirituality and the occult

Let’s look at each of these characteristics in more detail and analyze some examples from Romantic poetry and prose.

Characteristic 1: Emotion and Passion

The Romanticists were deeply in touch with their feelings. Emotion was one of the most crucial characteristics of the Romantic period.

Wordsworth said that poetry began as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” This statement perfectly captures the way that many Romanticists saw emotion as a driving force for art.

Romanticists cared about emotions such as fear, awe, and horror. In stories written by Romantic writers, characters often focus on the more sentimental sides of the story, including their inner struggles, dreams, and passions.

Similarly, many characters in Romantic literature fell in love, instead of marrying out of convenience. One notable example is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. When Heathcliff finds out that Catherine is dead, he utters:

“Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Heathcliff’s passion is the type of powerful emotion that was characteristic of Romantic literature—and an example of a book in which Romanticism and romance actually overlap.

Characteristic 2: The Critique of Progress

Romanticists viewed urbanity and industrialization in a largely negative light. Many Romantic authors understood the importance of progress, but criticized the way it impacted the common people.

In England, the Industrial Revolution had created a large working class that worked in dangerous and grueling conditions. The chasm between the rich and the poor was widening every day.

Many Romantic writers depicted the ugly side of urbanization and commercialism and used their writing to argue for social change in England.

Mary Shelley’s famous novel Frankenstein (1818) is an example of a Romantic novel that depicted the dangers of technology without emotion.

In the story, Victor Frankenstein is so obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge that he forgets to question his own ethics and ends up creating a monster. At one point, the monster even exclaims: "Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?"

Characteristic 3: A Return to the Past

Related to their critique of progress is the fact that Romanticists were fascinated with the past and resurrected it in various forms. They used their writing to remind everyone of what the past had to offer and how far society had moved away from the good old days.

Many Romanticists glorified the Middle Ages and revived elements of literature—such as knights in shining armor and damsels in distress—that were perceived as more medieval.

Similarly, Romantic writers were interested in ruins and old artifacts of history. Many Romanticists traveled to Greece and Italy to glean inspiration from Greek and Roman ruins.

Characteristic 4: An Awe of Nature

The Romanticists saw nature as a source of beauty and truth. Much of Romantic literature focuses on nature as something sublime.

There are countless Romantic poets who wrote lyrical ballads about everything from birds and flowers to mountains and clouds.

Take the poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807) by William Wordsworth, one of the most famous early Romantic poets. Here’s the first verse:

I wandered lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o'er vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden Daffodils; Beside the Lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

In this poem, he exalts the beauty of the daffodils he sees, painting a vivid image of the nature around him. He uses simple visual language to describe the sublime. In fact, ProWritingAid's Sensory check detects that 100% of the sensory language that Wordsworth uses is visual.

Characteristic 5: The Idealization of Women

In the Romantic era, women were seen as innocent, pure creatures who should be admired and respected.

Many Romantic poets and novelists centered their narratives around celebrating the purity and beauty of a woman.

Unfortunately, this idealization meant that the Romantic Movement typically saw women as objects for male admiration rather than as people with their own dreams and ambitions. Female writers such as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and the Brontë sisters had to publish under male pseudonyms because of these attitudes.

One example of the idealization of women is Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” (1849):

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Here, Poe puts Annabel on a pedestal as he describes how beautiful she was before her death.

Characteristic 6: The Purity of Childhood

Romanticists believed that children should be allowed to have a pure, happy childhood.

At the time, many children were forced to work in factories or as chimney sweeps, which was dangerous and grueling work for which they were paid extremely low wages. Romantic writers and poets depicted a different kind of childhood—a happy one full of play instead of work.

This is an excerpt from T.S. Arthur’s short story “An Angel in Disguise” (1851): "The sweetness of that sick child, looking ever to her in love, patience, and gratitude, was as honey to her soul, and she carried her in her heart as well as in her arms, a precious burden."

Here, Arthur describes the way a child’s “love, patience, and gratitude” brings happiness to a family.

Characteristic 7: The Search for Subjective Truth

Romanticists believed that truth could be discovered in nature and imagination. They shunned the objective truths of science in favor of the more subjective truths of art.

Self-expression was seen as the way to achieve absolute truth, which was more permanent and more divine than anything discovered with the rational mind. They questioned the notion that there could be any single truth.

The poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820) by John Keats is addressed to a marble urn of ancient Greece. The final line of the poem reads: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all.”

Characteristic 8: The Celebration of the Individual

Many Romanticists saw themselves as self-reliant, independent individuals who stood apart from the rest of society, and some even chose to lead largely isolated, solitary lives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay called Self-Reliance in 1841, describing the importance of determining your own path and relying on your own resources.

One well-known quote from the essay reads: "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

Characteristic 9: A Break From Convention

Romanticists were rebels at heart. Many of them were attracted to movements related to individualism and freedom from oppression. The French Revolution, and other movements toward democracy, inspired many Romantic philosophers.

Similarly, Romantic writers believed that individuals should be allowed to decide what and how they wanted to write, instead of following formal rules and classical conventions.

In general, Romanticism believed that the content of literature should come from the writer’s imagination, with minimal outside input. Being derivative, or copying work that had come before, was seen as the worst sin.

Many Romantic poets, such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, broke the conventions of the time. They wrote poetry that used the language of ordinary speech and felt like a normal conversation, instead of following the more sophisticated rules that other poets had followed before.

Walt Whitman took this a step farther by writing poetry in free verse, without any rhyme or meter. This is common in poetry today, but at the time, it was a groundbreaking choice that shook off previous rules.

Here’s the first verse of Walt Whitman’s famous poem “Song of Myself” (1855):

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Notice how he doesn’t conform to any type of rhyme scheme or meter. Instead, he writes a poem that feels almost like a conversation.

Characteristic 10: Spirituality and the Occult

As we’ve already discussed, Romanticists were interested in the infinite and the divine. As a result, Romanticism began to include occult and supernatural elements.

Many Romantic poems and stories involve some aspect of the mystical or the “gothic.”

Edgar Allan Poe is a commonly cited example of a Romantic writer who used spiritual and supernatural elements in his stories and poems. This is a verse from his poem “Spirits of the Dead” (1827), which depicts a divine mystery:

The breeze—the breath of God—is still— And the mist upon the hill, Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token— How it hangs upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries!

Romanticism as a literary movement has had tremendous influence on literature today.

The most direct legacy Romantic writers left behind is their body of work, which remains popular even now. Novels and poems from the Romantic period are still taught in most English literature classes.

More importantly, however, Romantic writers also broke conventions and elevated new themes in ways that changed the field for contemporary writers.

Before the Romantic Movement, most English literature centered around essays and studying the Classics, with a focus on rationality and truth. There were very specific conventions that well-respected writers were expected to follow.

Literary Romanticism shifted the focus of literature toward emotions and imagination. Any time you read a poem without a rhyme scheme, or a novel that focuses on the protagonist's emotions and passions, you're reading a descendant of the Romantic Era.

These are ten of the most important characteristics of Romanticism, a movement that continues to influence the literature we read today.

What are your favorite Romantic poems and stories? Let us know in the comments.

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Be confident about grammar Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send. Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction writer who writes about all things strange and surreal. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, The Dark, and elsewhere, and two of her stories have been finalists for the Locus Award. Her favorite hobbies include watercolor painting, playing guitar, and rock climbing. You can follow her work on hannahyang.com, or subscribe to her newsletter for publication updates. Get started with ProWritingAid Drop us a line or let's stay in touch via : Romanticism Romanticism was a movement that originated in Europe at the end of the 18th century and emphasized aesthetic experience and imagination. It was at its peak from 1800 to 1850 in the majority of the countries in which it gained a strong foothold. The movement influenced the visual arts, music, politics, and the social sciences. Explore Romanticism 1 Where and how did Romanticism start? 2 Who were the Romantic poets? 3 What form do Romantic poems take? 4 What are the common themes of Romanticism? Where and how did Romanticism start? Romanticism began in England. The term was first coined in the 1840s, but the structure of the movement was around in the late 1700s. Like its American counterpart, Transcendentalism , Romanticism was in part a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. It was a pushback against modernity and all its associated parts. The Romantics were interested in presenting an alternative to the growing aristocratic and political norms which came into being during the Age of the Enlightenment . They were also very much opposed to the rationalization of nature through science. While this movement was occurring within the minds and hearts of writers and thinkers in Europe, there were a series of rebellions taking place in parts of Europe as well as in America.  The ideologies which came to the forefront of the Romantic movement were inspired in part by these revolutions that were taking place. The French Revolution was particularly influential in the minds of the Romantics. Just like the Transcendentalists, the Romantics felt that there was more to nature than could be understood through science. This is clearly seen through the emotional connections and experiences depicted in the works of poets such as Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge . The latter’s poem, ‘ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is a great example of the importance of nature, as well as the impact of solitude and a general quest for salvation. Take a look at these lines as an example: And I had done a hellish thing, And it would work ’em woe: For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow!” Who were the Romantic poets? The most prominent of the Romantic poets are still some of the most popular poets today. The first generation of poets included William Blake , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and William Wordsworth . The most recognizable names of the second generation were: George Gordon, better known as Lord Byron Percy Bysshe Shelley , Lesser known, are the female writers of the movement. These include Anna Laetitia Barbauld , Letitia Elizabeth Landon , and Charlotte Smith . The latter’s Gothic poem ‘Sonnet on Being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland’ is a fantastic example of what emotions can do to transform a natural scene. Some examples of their works, which best exhibit the tenants of Romanticism are included at the bottom of this article. Romanticism was not confined to England, it stretches to France in the 19th century as well as to Germany and Russia. In France, some of the most prominent members of the movement were Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire , Alphonse de Lamartine, and Alfred de Viny. What form do Romantic poems take? Imagination was one of the most important tenants of Romanticism. Those involved placed a great deal of importance on the individual’s ability to think creatively. This meant that the structure or form of a poem had to reflect the same mode of thought. The poems had to be at once spontaneous and sincere. But most of all, the product of one’s imagination. This meant that there was no set of forms that were most prevalent during this period, although sonnets were quite popular. The use of language in poetry also changed during this period. Poets such as Keats disliked the stodgy language of the past. It did not suit the needs of this new movement. This led to a loosening of what kinds of words and phrases were acceptable. As long as they successfully spoke to the feelings a writer sought to express, they were used. What are the common themes of Romanticism? The major themes of Romanticism will be familiar to those who are versed in the beliefs of the Transcendental writers. They held aesthetic experience in the highest regard. Particularly, experiences associated with the strongest of emotions. These included horror , terror, awe, and wonder. These came together to form a new category of writing and art known as the “ sublime .” It was associated with the state in which one is aware of some kind of powerful event, but it’s far enough away from it to where the person in this scenario is not in immediate physical danger. You can imagine “The Great Day of his Wrath” by John Martin as a visual art example of the sublime. Other painters such as JMW Turner and Henry Fuseli also exhibit the tenants of sublimity . These painters, and writers such as Shelly and Wordsworth, were influenced by the idea of experiences that pushed human emotions to the limit. The natural world was a gateway to this kind of experience. The poem, ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ is a perfect example of how someone fleetingly experiences the sublime. In fact, Wordsworth mentions “sublime“ in the following lines: 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,— In this section, Wordsworth is speaking about his memories and how they’ve brought up more happy memories and the good deeds associated with them. His burden, which comes from the “weary weight” of the world is lightened when he is in a natural space. Take a look at these examples of Romantic poems: ‘Huge Vapours Brood above the Clifted Shore’ by Charlotte Smith ‘Daffodils’ by William Wordsworth ‘The Yellowhammer’s Nest’ by John Clare ‘Annabel Lee’ by Edgar Allen Poe ‘ London’ by William Blake ‘Revenge’ by Letitia Elizabeth Landon ‘Darkness’ by Lord Byron Home » Movements » Romanticism The Definitive Literary Glossary Crafted by Experts All terms defined are created by a team of talented literary experts, to provide an in-depth look into literary terms and poetry, like no other. Cite This Page Green, William. "Romanticism". Poem Analysis , https://poemanalysis.com/movement/romanticism/ . Accessed 1 July 2024. Help Center Request an Analysis (not a member? Join now) Poem PDF Guides PDF Learning Library Poetry + Newsletter Poetry Archives Poetry Explained Poet Biographies Useful Links Poem Explorer Poem Generator [email protected] Poem Solutions Limited, International House, 36-38 Cornhill, London, EC3V 3NG, United Kingdom Discover and learn about the greatest poetry, straight to your inbox Unlock the Secrets to Poetry In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation. Literary Theory and Criticism Home › Literature › Romantic Poetry Romantic Poetry By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on February 16, 2021 • ( 0 ) The classic essays on romanticism tend not to define the term but to survey the manifold and unsuccessful attempts to define it. In English poetry, however, we can give a more or less historical definition: Romanticism is a movement that can be dated as beginning with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge ’s Lyrical Ballads of 1798 and that is still continuing today, despite reactions and countermovements which begin almost immediately and which are highly relevant to any consideration of Victorian and modern literature. (Although romanticism includes all of William Blake’s major poetry, beginning more than a decade prior to Lyrical Ballads, Blake’s obscurity limited his influence on other major writers for a good half century.) Paradoxically, though, these reactions can themselves be regarded as highly romantic in nature— partly, perhaps, because one very general but still useful early (1825) definition of romanticism is, in the words of the French dramatist and politician Ludovic Vitet (1802–73), “Protestantism in arts and letters” (quoted in Furst, European Romanticism ). Protestantism was a protest against the fetters of the past (even romanticism itself)—against rule and convention, as Vitet realized—and therefore was also an analogue to the Protestant Reformation. In this sense, romanticism is the analogue in the literary sphere of the freedom brought by the Enlightenment in the political, moral, and philosophical world—according to Vitet, “the right to enjoy what gives pleasure, to be moved by what moves one, to admire what seems admirable, even when by virtue of well and duly consecrated principles it could be proved that one ought not to admire, nor be moved, nor enjoy.” Wordsworth, too, spoke of his object in Lyrical Ballads as giving pleasure to his readers, rather than conforming to rules: “There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction . . . because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry.” That pleasure is Protestant in its deference to the judgment and poetic conscience of the individual soul: “[T]his necessity of producing immediate pleasure . . . is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because it is not formal, but indirect; . . . it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves” (preface to Lyrical Ballads , 1800). Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818 Romanticism is therefore to be defined negatively, perhaps, as a principled protest against classicism. Since the French were the earliest to identify it as a movement, we can recur to the incisive definition one of the great French romantics, Victor Hugo, who (in the preface to his 1830 play Hernani ) wrote, “Romanticism, so often badly defined, is . . . viewed wholly under its militant aspect, nothing but liberalism in literature . . . a literary liberty [which] is the daughter of political liberty.” The philosopher John Stuart Mill was one of the earliest purveyors of the term in English, but again he was describing French literature when he wrote in 1837: The stateliness and conventional decorum of old French poetic and dramatic literature, gave place to a licence which made free scope for genius and also for absurdity, and let in new forms of the beautiful was well as many of the hideous. Literature shook off its chains, and used its liberty like a galley-slave broke loose; while painting and sculpture passed from one unnatural extreme to another, and the stiff school was succeeded by the spasmodic. This insurrection against the old traditions of classicism was called romanticism: and now, when the mass of rubbish to which it had given birth has produced another oscillation in opinion the reverse way, one inestimable result seems to have survived it—that life and human feeling may now, in France, be painted with as much liberty as they may be discussed, and, when painted truly, with approval. Mill’s account shows the extent to which romanticism was central to Victorian literary attitudes, even as the heyday of what came to be called high romanticism came to an end in England with the beginning of the Victorian period. Indeed, the Victorian parody of the continued influence of romanticism identified what it called the “spasmodic school” of poetry. These quotations show the extent to which romanticism is regarded as a revolutionary rejection of the past—of Mill’s classicism—which might be regarded as the literary equivalent of the French Revolution. Indeed, the first generation of English romantics were admirers of the French Revolution before its descent into destruction and terror. For this reason as well, the romantics saw Napoleon Bonaparte as a Promethean figure who promised liberty but ended up besotted with despotic power. Wordsworth, who celebrated the death of the French revolutionary Robespierre in The Prelude, nevertheless began that work with an ode to liberty. For the English romantics, that liberty was at once a break with Enlightenment rationalism and (as we have seen) a continuation of the Enlightenment’s intensely humanistic project of rejecting religious superstition and arbitrary law on behalf of the human soul’s freedom and primacy. It is important not to make the mistake that some critics fall into of thinking of romanticism as essentially an irrational egotism. Romanticism is far more the inheritor of Enlightenment ideas than their displacer. It shares with the Enlightenment an intense focus on the powers of the human mind. For Enlightenment philosophers, that focus was often on its rational and analytic powers, whence the flowering of modern science. But such Enlightenment figures as the philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau paid equal or greater attention to the mind’s subjective experience. Rousseau’s Confessions (1769) as well as his novel Julie (1761) were forerunners of intense influences on (respectively) such works as Wordsworth’s The Prelude , Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage , and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s T he Triumph of Life . In Immanuel Kant and the German idealists, and in Coleridge, much of whose work is uncomfortably close to plagiarism of the idealists, the relationship between its objective and subjective powers is central to a philosophical account of the mind. Kant saw that relationship forming in the faculty of judgment, of which aesthetic judgment was the most vivid example. The half-creation, half-perception of the world which takes place in judgment is the theme of romanticism, explicitly in such poems as Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Shelley’s “Mont Blanc.” Sometimes the difference between subjective and objective attitudes manifested itself as a sense of self-division within the soul, a sense that could be traced back to the philosophy of John Locke (1632– 1704), which was repugnant but therefore powerfully influential, to such figures as Blake and Wordsworth. Self-division, solitude, subjective longing—all of these are aspects of the subjectivity which romanticism took as its starting point and theme (in part inheriting it from the more sentimental mode of 18th-century sensibility, though sensibility was far more an overtly social phenomenon than romanticism). Because of its intense interest in subjectivity as well as its rejection of superstition, it is possible to see romanticism as a kind of religious sensibility without religious belief. The soul, or self, experiences itself as fallen in a fallen world (often represented as the world of childhood or the world most closely present in childhood). In Romanticism, by rejecting the doctrines of religion—that the biblical Fall is punishment for some derogation from a state of grace—the soul also rejects the consolations of religion; accordingly, it has no hope of salvation except within itself and its own experience. That salvation is therefore primarily aesthetic and philosophical (the distinction between the two is one of emphasis, which is why so many romantic poems are so intensely philosophical). The romantics took to heart Satan’s claim in John Milton’s great 17th-century work Paradise Lost (the poem most essential to the English romantics) that “The mind is its own place and in itself / Can make a Heaven of hell, a Hell of heaven (1, l. 254).” Our sense of ourselves as fallen, as having a destiny and home “with infinity,” as Wordsworth says, makes the finite world a negative measure of our own subjective intensity. When this intensity is represented as a claim to greatness of soul, it can look egotistical; but what counts is the intensity of experience measured by the failure as well as by the intermittent success of the outside world at matching it. This intermittent success tends to come with a sense of the grandeur of nature, which is why so much great romantic poetry is about nature in its most intense aspects: those of beauty, solitude, and most of all, the sublime. Nature’s wildness, partly imaged in ruined castles and abbeys, which had been a staple of gothic fiction in the 18th century were particularly appropriate settings for romantic thought. But nature is itself a projection—it is the place the mind makes of it, as in the last two lines of Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” where it is the human mind’s imaginings that transfigure vacancy into silence and solitude. The general mode of a romantic poem is one of crisis—a crisis that leads to its own solution. The very fact of crisis is a sign that the intensity of feeling and thought at risk is still there. Romantic poets worry about the loss of intensity that seems the inevitable course of human experience, but they reimagine that loss of intensity as the intensity of loss. Loss becomes, as the 20th-century literary critic Paul de Man put it somewhat skeptically, “shadowed gain.” The gain for the soul is in its apprehension of its own capacity to measure its losses, and therefore to rise above them. Loss within the soul comes to be figured as the loss of poetic vocation. The poetry inspired by this loss is a sign that poetic vocation is intensified in its own undoing, rather than dissipated— for a while at least. Romanticism reimagined poetry as an intense analysis of human subjectivity, and in doing so it lent splendor to the universal human experience of loss and decline. What more can poetry do? Bibliography Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York: Norton, 1973. Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961. ———, ed. Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism. New York: Norton, 1970. Brown, Marshall. Preromanticism. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991. Deane, Seamus. French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, 1789–1832. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. De Man, Paul. The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Furst, Lilian, ed. European Romanticism: Self-Definition: An Anthology. London: Methuen, 1980. Lovejoy, Arthur. “On the Discrimination of Romanticisms.” PMLA (journal of the Modern Language Association) 39, no. 2 (June 1924): 229–253. McGann, Jerome. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Mill, John Stuart. “Armand Carrel.” In Dissertations and Discussions. Vol. 1. 237–308. Boston: Holt, 1882. Quinney, Laura. The Poetics of Disappointment: Wordsworth to Ashbery. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999. Romanticism in England Romanticism in France Romanticism in America Romantic Literary Criticism Literary Criticism of William Wordsworth Literary Criticism of S.T. Coleridge Share this: Categories: Literature Tags: Features of Romanticism , Literary Criticism , Literary Theory , Poetry , Romantic Poetry , Romantic poets , Romantic poets and their themes , Romanticism , Romanticism analysis , Romanticism essay , Romanticism ideas , Romanticism in England , Romanticism in Poetry , Themes of Romantic poetry Related Articles Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Charles Lamb What characteristics of Romanticism are in Charles Lamb's essays? Quick answer: Charles Lamb's essays exhibit key characteristics of Romanticism, such as a focus on personal experience, reflection, and the imagination. For instance, in "Old China," Lamb explores the tension between internal and external worlds through dialogues about china dishes, symbolizing the static elements in a changing world and reflecting on themes like the loss of youth. Similarly, "Dream Children: A Reverie" showcases Lamb's use of dreamlike narratives and a focus on lost innocence, typical of Romantic ideals. Additionally, Lamb's preference for content over form and his fascination with life's mysteries and the past further align his work with Romanticism. Expert Answers Who are the experts? Our certified Educators are real professors, teachers, and scholars who use their academic expertise to tackle your toughest questions. Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team. Teacher (K-12), Professional Tutor B.A. from Harvard University Ph.D. from Rutgers University Educator since 2016 4,241 answers I am a high school teacher and have worked as a tutor for students in grades 3 through college. Many of Charles Lamb 's essays had Romantic elements. He wrote using the pseudonym Elia, and one of his collections of essays is often referred to as the "Elia essays." One of his Elia essays, "Old China," contains two monologues about the past between Elia and his cousin, Bridget. Like Romantic poets, Lamb's essay concentrates on personal experience and reflection. The characters in the essay speak over china dishes, which is a reference to the external world. Their talk over the china dishes shows the tension between their external and internal worlds in a manner that is characteristic of the Romantic writers. The china cups they use are, like Keats's Grecian urn, a static element in an ever-changing world. The theme of the essay relates to the loss of youth and innocence--which is a central theme of Romanticism. Another example of his essays that has a Romantic element is "Dream Children: A Reverie," which is a discursive, dreamlike essay in which Lamb fancifully imagines telling his children, which he does not have, about his childhood. His essay involves his imagining that he had married a past girlfriend, and so the essays feature an element of the imagination that is Romantic in nature. He does not write to prove a point or to use reason; instead, his essays meander in a way that is dreamlike. Like the work of Romantic poets, Lamb's essay is about the lost dreams and innocence of childhood.  Reference: Richard Haven. The Romantic Art of Charles Lamb. ELH Vol. 30 , No. 2 (Jun., 1963), pp. 137-146. Cite this page as follows: Bruce, Olen. "What characteristics of Romanticism are in Charles Lamb's essays?" edited by eNotes Editorial, 5 July 2016, https://www.enotes.com/topics/charles-lamb/questions/characteristics-romanticism-essays-lamb-64525. Educator since 2009 2,148 answers I have a Master of Arts degree in English and taught college-prep high school English literature and composition. Many of the works of Charles Lamb are reflective of the literary  Romanticism of his age. He was more interested in content over form; the expression of thought and feeling was paramount in his writing. His work was imaginative, frequently examining with some wonderment those aspects of life that cannot be explained through rational thought or analysis, life's mysteries. Like other Romantics, Lamb was fascinated with the past, with antiquity, and with fantasy. See eNotes Ad-Free Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. Already a member? Log in here. Hurn, Susan. "What characteristics of Romanticism are in Charles Lamb's essays?" edited by eNotes Editorial, 15 Feb. 2009, https://www.enotes.com/topics/charles-lamb/questions/characteristics-romanticism-essays-lamb-64525. Popular Questions Latest answer posted July 23, 2021 at 12:36:13 AM What are the main themes of Charles Lamb's essay "Imperfect Sympathies"? Latest answer posted March 03, 2023 at 3:03:30 PM What is the central theme of Charles Lamb's essay "Barrenness Of The Imaginative Faculty In The Productions Of Modern Art?" Latest answer posted August 26, 2021 at 3:52:54 PM Why does Charles Lamb criticize the obsession with nature in "The Londoner"? Latest answer posted April 22, 2016 at 10:33:34 PM What is the explanation of Charles Lamb's essay "Poor Relations"? Latest answer posted December 12, 2021 at 8:39:02 AM What is Lamb's purpose in writing "A Bachelor's Complaint on the Behaviour of Married People"? 121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples In a romanticism essay, you can explore a variety of topics, from American literature to British paintings. For that task, these ideas of romanticism collected by our team will be helpful! 🏆 Best Romanticism Ideas & Essay Examples ⭐ Simple & Easy Romanticism Essay Titles 📌 Most Interesting Romanticism Essay Topics 👍 good research ideas on romanticism, ❓ essay questions on romanticism. Wordsworth’s Romanticism in Tintern Abbey Poem The tone of the poem is calm and meditative and Wordsworth describes the “landscape” and compares it to the “quiet” of the sky: “The landscape with the quiet of the sky”.. Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism in Literature Romantic literature is characterized by several key traits, such as a love of nature, an emphasis on the individual and spirituality, a celebration of solitude and sadness, an interest in the common man, an idealization […] Between Romanticism and Modernism The first of the modernists in music sought to begin new dimensions and depths in music through the use of non-conventional instruments and novel sounds. Romanticism and Victorian Literature Comparison In this respect, literature can be proud of the Romanticism and Victorian literature, because of their gradual framework and applicable emergence due to the significant events, such as the French Revolution, American Revolution, the defeat […] Romanticism in Wolfgang Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther It is the fruitless reconciliation of the impulsive and sensitive to the society that makes Young Werther’s journey so powerful. What is even more interesting is that this general tone is what led to the […] The French Revolution: Romanticism Period Romanticism was anchored in the work of the poets which was evident in the daily lives of the society. Besides, the role of women in romantic literature was significant, thus; they were greatest poets and […] Restoration Literature and Romanticism: Common Facts All in all, the period of Restoration in the English literature can be described as the vindication of mind, intellectual values and political interests. The diction of this period is soft, inspiring, light and moving. Ethnocentrism, Romanticism, Exoticism, and Primitivism as Depicted in James Cameron’s “Avatar” Ethnocentrism is depicted in most scenes of Avatar; the film outlines Na’vi’s ways of life and the way the protagonist is forced to profess the culture before being admitted into the community. Romanticism, Baroque and Renaissance Paintings’ Analysis It is possible to focus on such artworks as the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar Friedrich, The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio, and Raphael’s The School of Athens. Romanticism and the Modern Theatre The statement by the Romantic writer confirms the need to involve ordinary people in the theatre. The relationship between Faust and the devil in Goethe’s play is different from that in the traditional myth. Light vs. Dark Romanticism As the narration continues and Katrina is wooed by Crane, Irving interrupts and expresses his imagination about the challenging and admirable nature of women. The History of the Romanticism Period Romanticism refers to the period of intellectual, artistic and literary movement in Europe in the first half of nineteenth century. The supporters of the Romantic Movement point to the spontaneous and irrational display of powerful […] Nature in 18th Century and Romanticism Literatures The anxiety inherent in a sketch – the feeling of being unsettled – leads Goldsmith to other stylistic choices, most notably the creation of illusions and the reliance upon sentiment, both of which smooth away […] Feminism Builds up in Romanticism, Realism, Modernism Exploring the significance of the theme as well as the motifs of this piece, it becomes essential to understand that the era of modernism injected individualism in the literary works. Nature as the Mean of Expression in Romanticism The period of Romanticism is characterized by its address to nature, in other words, the world was perceived through the nature.”It is characterized by a shift from the structured, intellectual, reasoned approach of the 1700’s […] Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poetry: British Romanticism There can be no doubt as to the fact that Romantic writers and poets strongly opposed the ideals of the French Revolution; however, this was not due to these ideals’ rational essence, but because, during […] Romanticism in Seascape Painting by Jules Dupre In particular, it is important to examine the stylistic peculiarities of this artwork and the way in which it reflects the cultural trends that emerged in the nineteenth century. Nineteenth Century Romanticism The works of early composers, writers, painters, and poets evolved from the onset, and in the increased quest for perfection, a spirit of romanticism was born. Gothic Romanticism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Nathaniel Hawthorn’s “The Birthmark” In the film “The Black Swan” directed by Darren Aronofsky, Nina struggles to fit into the ultimate role of the play “The Swan Lake”, as the Black Swan, even though she is comfortable playing the […] Romanticism of Blake’s and Ghalib’s Poems In this journal, I will look at how Blake and Ghalib exemplify the Romantic movement, how their works differ from those of the Enlightenment, and the significance of their democratic and accessible writing style. Romanticism: Beethoven’s Pathétique and Douglass’ The Narrative Two such examples of Romanticism works are Beethoven’s piano sonata, Pathetique, and Frederick Douglass’s The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Researching of Musical Romanticism The critical characteristics of musical Romanticism could be seen in the stress on uniqueness and individuality, the expression of one’s emotions, and freedom of form and experimentation. Renaissance and Romanticism: Concepts of Beauty Titian, as a representative of the Renaissance, depicted a portrait of a girl in compliance with all the canons of his time. ⭐ Simple & Easy Romanticism Essay Titles Romanticism as an Ideological and Artistic Trend Romanticism in painting rejected the rationalism of classicism and reflected the attention to the depths of the human personality characteristic of the philosophy of the Romantics. Romanticism in Modern Ecological Literature The current efforts by humans to safeguard the environment, coupled with the onset of ecological literature, not only indicates that romanticism never disappeared but also proves that the romantics were right. The artists were critical […] Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, and Rococo Thus, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the neoclassical style was widely popular in Europe. This style contradicted the coldness and simplicity of neoclassicism. Features of French Romanticism in Camille Saint-Saens’s Music It is important to analyze Camille Saint-Saens’s works in the context of French Romanticism because the composer often combined the elements of French Romanticism with features typical of other movements and music styles like habanera. Romanticism. Artists Associated With the Movement Art dealt mostly with issues of motive and realism while other forms of art dealt with the darkness of the community on one hand and its magnificence on the other. Gothic Romanticism of Edgar Allen Poe When the thought of today, the nineteenth-century writer Edgar Allan Poe is remembered as the master of the short story and the psychological thriller. Revolution and Romanticism in Europe and America The analysis of romanticism presentation on the basis of Rousseau’s theory is to be reflected through the atmosphere of French revolution period. Romanticism of Rousseau appeared to be close to the approach of ‘primitivism’, characterizing […] Romanticism: Paintings by Francisco Goya The first painting depicted a nude woman in the Western art and the second painting was painted after controversial thoughts from the Spanish society over the meaning of The Nude Maja. Tristan and Isolde Opera Romanticism The Tristan and Isolde drama is influenced by a wide range of things. Wagner uses the voices to show what is in the thoughts of Isolde and her attendant. British Romanticism and Its Origins It was partially a rebellion against aristocratic social and political standards of the Age of Enlightenment and a response against the scientific explanation of nature and was exemplified most powerfully in the visual arts, music, […] Romanticizing Literature, Visual Arts and Music During Romanticism 1800-1850 As “it emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental”, the Romanticism period inspired many artists in the field of literature, painting, music, […] Enlightenment and Romanticism: Comparison In the wake up of the feminist and historicist takes to pieces of the older Romanticism, particularly Bloom’s “creative thinker corporation” and the Wordsworth-centered verse of consciousness and the natural world, one has to inquire […] American Romanticism of “The Minister’s Black Veil” In the story Hawthorne pondered upon the three ways of making God’s word clearer to people. The author himself and his main hero saw the mission of a clergyman in explaining the Bible to the […] Chopin: Musician Who Had Effect Romanticism Music At the beginning of the musical period known as Romanticism Frederic Chopin was born in Poland. The piano was his chosen instrument and one that he mastered at a very young age. The Age of Romanticism and Its Factors Characteristics of the genre identified by Welleck include a “revolt against the principles of neo-classicism criticism, the rediscovery of older English literature, the turn toward subjectivity and the worship of external nature slowly prepared during […] Neoclassicism and Romanticism: Comparison They were the two poles of architectural thinking on the side of Neoclassicism was a rational, objective, almost scientific method of thought, which put reason in the first place among human abilities. Romanticism. Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” One of the most typical traits of romantic literature is the prevalence of emotions, setting the natural world above the created world, and the most important, freedom of an individual. Gustave Courbet: Revolutionary Artist of Romanticism While the clergy is visible from the background of the work, the decision by the painter to focus on the dog in the foreground was even more appalling. Baroque and Romanticism Art Periods and Influences The above two works of art depict great disparities in art as a result of communal, political, and economic factors of mankind during the periods. American Industrialization, Romanticism and Civil War In the article, the Romantic Movement Romantic impulse meant the liberation of the Americans to a point of freedom regarding respect and love. The Age of Romanticism: Dances Articles Analysis On the one hand, it seems that these two writings have nothing in common except the intentions of the authors to make contributions to the field of dance and choose the theme of ballet for […] Edgar Allan Poe, an American Romanticism Writer Poe’s three works “The fall of the house of Usher”, “the Raven” and “The Masque of the Red Death” describe his dedication to literature and his negative attitudes towards aristocracy. Art influences Culture: Romanticism & Realism In addition, the paper also highlights issues of the time and influences of the later works on the art world. Realism presented events of the society as they happened in reality. Romanticism Period in Art 3 It is against this scope that this paper aims to explore the aspect of romanticism in the history of painting by considering the works of artists such as Kauffmann, David, Delacroix and Gros. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Romanticism The Three Different Features of Romanticism in The World is Too Much With Us, a Poem by William Wordsworth Romanticism And Realism: Examples Of Mark Twain And Herman Melville Novels William Cullen Bryant and American Romanticism The American Renaissance: Transcendentalism, Romanticism and Dark Romanticism The Influence Of The French Revolution Upon British Romanticism The Relationship Between Romanticism And Transcendentalism Transcendentalism: Principal Expression of Romanticism in America Socialism And Ideas Associated With The Movement In Relation To Those Of Romanticism Women’s Self-Discovery During Late American Romanticism The French Romanticism Of Moliere And Shakespeare ‘s Midsummer Night ‘s The Role of Romanticism and Realism in the Development of Art The Historical Development of Literature from the Enlightenment through Romanticism to Modernism The Characteristics of the Romanticism in Wordsworth The Influence of Romanticism on People as Demonstrated in the Story of Madam Bovary Realism and Romanticism: Similarities and Differences The Romanticism Movement in the Novel The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff Varieties Of Romanticism In The Poetry Of Blake Shelly And Keats Walt Whitman And The Romanticism Movement Sexism, Romanticism, and the Portrayal of Women in Eighteenth Century Art The Shift from Romanticism to Realism in Mark Twain’s Satire Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences The Washington Irving’s Romanticism The Categorization of Romanticism and Realism at the End of the Baroque Period in the 18th Century The Theme of Nature in Frankenstein as a Representation of the Effect Romanticism Had on Mary Shelley The Key Tensions in Romanticism in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan and Keat’s Ode to a Nightingale Tom Sawyer as a Representation of Walter Scott’s Romanticism and Tradition in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a Novel by Mark Twain The Use of Romanticism in The Raven, a Poem by Edgar Allan Poe William Wordsworth’s Daffodils and Negative Romanticism The Use of Romanticism by Different Literary Authors The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – An Obvious Depiction of Romanticism and Realism What Is The Romanticism Of Johnathan Keats And Wordsworth The Romanticism Of The 19th Century The Tables Turned’ by William Wordsworth and Romanticism Use Of Romanticism In Development Of Characters In The Scarlet Letter The Similarities Between Romanticism And Modernism The Effect of Romanticism, Nationalism, and Communism in Shaping the European Nations The Progression of Knowledge Between the 18th-Century Neoclassicism and 19th-Century Romanticism The Origins, Spirit, Style, Themes, and Decline of the Romanticism Movement in Literature The Elements of Romanticism in the Short Story, The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe The Symbols of Romanticism in the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Characteristics Of Romanticism Found In The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner The Romanticism and Realism in Art and Literature The Themes of Guilt, Suffering, and Experience in Literature During the Romanticism and Victorian Era What Is the Difference Between Romanticism and Postmodernism? How Does William Wordsworth’s Poetry Fit Into the Literary Tradition of Romanticism? What Are the Differences Between Romanticism and Classicism? How Did Romanticism and Photography Shape Western Modernity? What Is the Opposite of Romanticism? Is Nature a Dominant Theme in Romantic Poetry? What Were the Material Causes of the Rise of Romanticism? How Did Romanticism Change Society’s Way of Thinking? What Are the Similarities Between Romantic Literature and Early Victorian Literature? How Has Romanticism Diminished Throughout Popularity? What Are the Main Features of Romantic Poetry? How Did Romanticism Influence American Architecture? What Are the Four Basic Tenets of Romanticism? How Did Romanticism Kill Love? What Did the Romantics Revolt Against, and What Did They Revive? How Do Romantics Emphasize Individuality? What Were the Characteristic Features of Poetry During the Romantic Movement? Why Did Romantic Writers Reject Rationalism? What Are Some Characteristics of Romantic Poetry? Why Is Imagination Closely Linked With Romanticism? What Is the Contribution of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley to the Romanticism? Why Is the Prometheus Myth Important for Romanticism? What Is Romantic Language and Style? Who Were the Most Famous Writers During the American Romantic Era? What Are Some Short Notes on Romanticism? Why Should a Student Study Romantic Poetry? What Is the Importance of 3 Major Concepts of Romanticism? How Does Romantic Writing Differ From the Early American Writings Done by the Puritans? What Are the Salient Features of Romanticism? What Inspired Poets of Romantic Era to Write Poems? Postmodernism Essay Topics Artists Research Ideas Modernism Ideas Expressionism Research Topics Photography Essay Topics Classical Music Paper Topics Transcendentalism Research Topics Popular Culture Paper Topics Chicago (A-D) Chicago (N-B) IvyPanda. (2024, February 29). 121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/romanticism-essay-examples/ "121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples." IvyPanda , 29 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/romanticism-essay-examples/. IvyPanda . (2024) '121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples'. 29 February. IvyPanda . 2024. "121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/romanticism-essay-examples/. 1. IvyPanda . "121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/romanticism-essay-examples/. Bibliography IvyPanda . "121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/romanticism-essay-examples/. An Exploration of Romanticism Through Art and Poetry Resources & Preparation Instructional Plan Related Resources In this lesson, students use art and poetry to explore and understand major characteristics of the Romantic period. First, students are introduced to the historical, societal, and literary characteristics of the Romantic period. Next, students deepen their understanding of Romanticism through an evaluation of William Wordsworth's definition of poetry. Students then complete an explication of a painting from the Romantic period, noting its defining characteristics. They use the TP-CASTT method to complete a literary analysis of Wordsworth's poem "The World is Too Much With Us," using their knowledge of Romantic characteristics to classify the poem as Romantic. In the final session, students begin to write an essay showing their understanding of Romanticism. Featured Resources Poetry Analysis—TP-CASTT : This resource explains the TP-CASTT method of poetry analysis and provides a blank chart for use in analysis. Characteristics of Romanticism : This printable chart lists characteristics of Romanticism, along with explanations of each. Is It Romantic? : Students can use this chart to identify elements from any work and explain how they reflect characteristics of Romanticism. From Theory to Practice In the introduction of his book Reading in the Dark , John Golden observes that students "tend to be visually oriented, able to point out every significant image in a three-minute MTV music video, but when it comes to doing the same with a written text, they stare at it as if they are reading German." Golden goes on to state "the skills they use to decode the visual image are the same skills they use for a written text" (xiii). Golden's book outlines how to use film to help students practice their skills so they can then be transferred to written texts. This lesson is based on the same principle but uses a painting instead of a film to reinforce the skills that students use to analyze a work of literature. Further Reading Common Core Standards This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming. State Standards This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state. NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works. 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience. 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics). 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts. 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience. 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge. 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information). Materials and Technology Copies of "The World Is Too Much With Us" by William Wordsworth Characteristics of Romanticism   Statements that Embody or Suggest Romanticism   Wordsworth Quote Word Web   Wordsworth Quote Word Web—Teacher Copy   Artwork Explication: The Raft of the Medusa   Is It Romantic?   The Raft of the Medusa Romantic Characteristics   Essay Assignment   Romanticism Essay Rubric Preparation Familiarize yourself with the historical background behind Théodore Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa .   Test the ReadWriteThink The Raft of the Medusa interactive on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tool.   Make copies or transparencies of all necessary handouts, including two copies per student of the Is It Romantic? handout.   Print out a copy of the Wordsworth Quote Word Web Teacher Copy for your reference.   Familiarize yourself with Romanticism with the History Guide's Toward a Definition of Romanticism . Student Objectives Students will identify and explain how the characteristics of a literary genre are reflected in a work of art and piece of literature.   examine the details in a work of art by sketching and labeling its major elements.   synthesize knowledge of the ways that a painting uses subject, symbolism, color and light, composition, movement, and perspective to draw conclusions about the overall tone and theme of a work of art.   analyze the overall significance, meaning, and theme of a work of art and literature through an explication of its individual elements.   explain how specific elements (diction, symbolism, characterization, tone, and elements of plot) establish the tone and theme of a work of art and a piece of literature.   explain how the elements establish both a work of art and a piece of literature as examples of Romanticism. Session One Begin the lesson by asking students to write a paragraph response to the following question: What does it mean to call something Romantic ? Have students share their responses with the class and discuss how students' answers are similar and different. Write several responses on the board and save them for later. Display a transparency of the Romanticism Statements , and as you read through them, have students indicate on a sheet of paper whether they personally agree or disagree with each statement by recording "A" for agree or "D" for disagree. 3 or fewer As = "not Romantic"   4 or 5 As = "sort of Romantic"   6 or 7 As = "highly Romantic"   8-10 As = "extremely Romantic" How has your understanding of Romanticism changed?   Briefly describe your definition of Romantic.   How is your definition of Romantic similar to and different from Romanticism? Session Two What are the five characteristics of Romanticism?   What were some of the basic Romantic beliefs?   Do you think these beliefs are relevant today? Why or why not? After a whole-class discussion of these characteristics, break the class into five small groups and have each group discuss one of them. Do group members agree or disagree with the Romantic philosophy on this point? Why? Each group should be prepared to present their position to the class during the next session. Session Three Have each of the five groups from Session Two present the results of their discussion to the whole class. Review the characteristics of Romanticism with students before moving on to the next activity. Write the phrase "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" on the board. Introduce the concept by explaining that it is from an introduction William Wordsworth wrote for a book of poems titled Lyrical Ballads . Explain that the book, published in 1802, contains poems written by Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, and is considered by many to be the beginning of the Romantic Movement in literature. Pass out the Wordsworth Quote Word Web handout to students. Use the handout to lead a discussion of how Wordsworth's statement corresponds with the characteristics of Romanticism. Students can refer back to the Characteristics of Romanticism handout, if necessary. You might also wish to review connotation and denotation before students complete this activity. First have students identify the denotative meanings for the words "spontaneous," "overflow," "powerful," and "feelings." Have students refer to classroom or online references such as Merriam-Webster Online as needed. Have students record their responses on the Wordsworth Quote Word Web handout. Use the notes on the Wordsworth Quote Word Web Teacher Copy to guide students' responses. Then ask students to suggest some possible connotative meanings for the words on the Wordsworth Quote Word Web . Encourage students to consider both positive and negative connotations of the words. For example, a "spontaneous" person can be seen as both exciting and interesting, as well as disorganized. Make a list of students' responses. Then ask students to consider both the denotative and connotative meanings and describe how all of these words connect to one or more of the characteristics of Romanticism. Session Four What images do you see in Géricault's painting?   What do you think Géricault's purpose was in depicting this event?   What do you like about the painting? Why?   What don't you like about the painting? Why? Then have students visit the ReadWriteThink The Raft of the Medusa interactive. Review how this tool is used, and then allow enough time for students to explore the painting. They should click on each highlighted area to learn more and respond to prompts about the painting. Have students print out their work when they are finished.   A "pyramid of hope" is created in the center of the painting by dead figures at the bottom, dying figures in the middle, and a topmost figure waving a rag at the top.   A large wave in the mid-left side of the painting threatens to break on the raft.   Rays of sunlight breaking on the horizon at the top of the painting.   On the right side a tiny image of a rescue ship can be seen on the distant horizon.   In the far right hand corner of the raft is a bloodstained axe. After students have completed the interactive activity, distribute the Artwork Explication: The Raft of the Medusa handout. Have students work on completing the sheet with a partner or in small groups during the rest of this session. Students should then complete this activity for homework. Session Five Review students' completed Artwork Explication: The Raft of the Medusa sheets. Take time to answer any questions students have about the assignment before moving on to the next step. Review with students the five primary characteristics of Romanticism. Then distribute the Is It Romantic? handout. Have students complete the chart by recording examples from the painting that illustrate characteristics of the Romantic period in the first column. In the second column they should explain how each example fits the Romantic characteristic. After students complete the handout, discuss the following question as a class or in small groups: What characteristics of the painting The Raft of the Medusa qualify the work as Romantic? If students work in small groups, have them record their responses and report back to the class. Circulate among the groups as well, in order to monitor students' understanding of the task. Examples of possible student responses can be found on the The Raft of the Medusa Romantic Characteristics sheet. Session Six Title: Ponder the title before reading the poem.   Paraphrase: Translate the poem into your own words.   Connotation: Contemplate the poem for meaning beyond the literal.   Attitude: Observe both the speaker's and the poet's attitude (tone).   Shifts: Note shifts in speakers and in attitudes.   Title: Examine the title again, this time on an interpretive level.   Theme: Determine what the poet is saying. Distribute copies of the poem " The World Is Too Much With Us " by William Wordsworth as well as the Poetry Analysis—TP-CASTT handout. On the first page of the handout are analysis questions to help guide students in using the steps in the TP-CASTT method to complete an analysis of the poem. Students will use the answers to the analysis questions to complete the blank TP-CASTT chart on the second page of the Poetry Analysis—TP-CASTT handout. Circle the projected image of the following words in the poem's title: "World," "Too Much," "Us."   Ask students to identify the denotative and connotative meanings for each of the circled words.   Demonstrate how students should mark up the copy of their poem with notes about the connotative and denotative meanings of the words in the title. Use the image of the text projected onto a white board as a tool to help guide students through each step of the TP-CASTT process. As you work through each step, have students record their responses on the blank TP-CASTT chart. Alternately, you may wish to complete the first one or two steps as a group and then have students work in small groups to compete the chart. Session Seven Review with students the five primary characteristics of Romanticism. You may wish to have students refer back to the Characteristics of Romanticism handout. Distribute the Is It Romantic? handout. Have students complete the chart by recording examples from Wordsworth's poem " The World Is Too Much With Us " that illustrate characteristics of the Romantic period in the first column. In the second column they should explain how each example fits the Romantic characteristic. Encourage students to use the notes that they created in the previous session to help them complete the chart. Wikipedia provides additional background information on Proteus and Triton , references Wordsworth uses in the poem. You might want to share this information or have students read these pages as an additional tool in classifying this poem as Romantic. After students complete the handout, discuss as a class or in small groups the characteristics of the poem " The World Is Too Much With Us " that qualify the work as Romantic. If students work in small groups, have them record their responses and report back to the class. Circulate among the groups as well, in order to monitor students' understanding of the task. Session Eight Have students begin to apply their new learning by beginning to write an essay using one of the options on the Essay Assignment sheet. Allow students time in class to begin their essays. Students may complete the essays for homework, if necessary. Share the Romanticism Essay Rubric with students to use as a guide before they begin to write and allow time for student questions about the assignment and rubric. Student Assessment / Reflections Evaluate the thesis statement, organization, supporting evidence, analysis, fluency, and mechanics of students’ essays using the Romanticism Essay Rubric . Provide feedback to students based on the rubric evaluation.   Informally assess students’ participation in whole- and small-group activities. Did students participate fully in discussions and other activities? Did students freely share ideas and opinions? How well did students work cooperatively within their groups? How well did students demonstrate an understanding of Romanticism and Romantic characteristics?   Use students’ Is It Romantic? sheets to check for their understanding of the Romantic characteristics of The Raft of the Medusa and “ The World Is Too Much With Us .”   Review students’ answers to the Artwork Explication: The Raft of the Medusa handout to check how well they have analyzed the piece of art for diction, characterization, imagery, symbolism, tone, plot, and theme. Professional Library Lesson Plans Through discussion, drawing, and writing, students compare how William Carlos Williams's poetry and Cubist and Precisionist painting employ similar artistic strategies, enhancing their understanding of both kinds of text. Add new comment Print this resource Explore Resources by Grade Kindergarten K Skip to main content Skip to secondary menu Skip to primary sidebar Skip to footer A Plus Topper Improve your Grades Romanticism Essay | Essay on Romanticism for Students and Children in English February 13, 2024 by Prasanna Romanticism Essay:  Romanticism was an artistic, intellectual, literary and musical movement that took place in Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century and mid-nineteenth century. This artistic movement was at its peak in most areas in the approximate period of 1800 to 1850. The prominence can characterise Romanticism it gave to emotional sensitivity and individual subjectivity along with the glorification of all the nature and past preferring the medieval rather than the classical. For Romantics, imagination was the most important creative faculty, rather than reason. You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more. Long and Short Essays on Romanticism for Students and Kids in English We are providing students with essay samples on a long essay of 500 words and a short essay of 150 words on the topic Romanticism for reference. Long Essay on Romanticism 500 Words in English Long Essay on Romanticism is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10. Romanticism was an artistic period of attitude or intellectual orientation that was characterised by several works of literature music, painting, architecture, criticism and historiography in the Western Civilisation over a time period from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century. Romanticism was first defined as the aesthetic in literary criticism around the 1800s, and it gained momentum as an artistic movement in Britain and France. Romanticism was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the political norms and noble social of the Age of Enlightenment and the scientific rationalisation of nature – all elements of modernity. It was embodied most strongly in literature, visual arts and music but had a major impact on chess, natural sciences, social sciences and education. It also had a remarkable and complex effect on politics with the romantic thinkers influencing nationalism, liberalism, conservatism and radicalism. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the perception of harmony, order, calm, idealisation, balance and rationality. This typified Classism in general and Neoclassicism in particular in the late 18th century. Romanticism was also an aftermath of the French Revolution that took place in 1789. Even though often predicted as the opposition of Neoclassicism, early stages of Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques Louis David’s studio, including Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson, Baron Antoine Jean Gros and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The movement emphasised on intense emotions serving as an authentic source of an aesthetic experience. It gave a new emphasis to emotions such as horror, terror, apprehension and awe – especially those experienced in confronting the unique aesthetic characteristics of sublimity and nature’s beauty. Contrasting to Classicism and Rationalism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism brought back medievalism. It also brought back the elements of art and narrative perceived as truthfully medieval in the attempt at escaping population growth, industrialism and early urban sprawl. Although this artistic movement was rooted in German Sturm and Drang movement, in which emotion and intuition were preferred to the rationalism of Enlightenment, the ideologies and events of the French Revolution also served as proximate factors. It elevated ancient customs and folklore to something noble but also spontaneity as a helpful characteristic. Romanticism gave a high value to the achievements of ‘heroic’ artists and individualists, whose example it maintained would raise the quality of the society. It also helped in promoting the individual an individual’s imagination as a critical authority gave the freedom of classical notions of forms in art. The period of Romanticism had a few elements which stood out in the Western Civilisation. Romantics had belief in individuals and the common man, and they shared their love for nature. Romanticism showed interest in the past, supernatural, gothic and bizarre things. They had great faith in the inner experience and the power of imagination. There was a strong recourse to the natural and historical inevitability – a spirit o the age in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Realism was offered, which served as the polar opposite of Romanticism. The decline of Romanticism started during this time which was associated with multiple processes, including political and social changes and spread of nationalism. Short Essay on Romanticism 150 Words in English Short Essay on Romanticism is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Romanticism was an intellectual as well as an artistic movement that occurred in Europe between the period of the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Recognised broadly as a break from the Enlightenment’s guiding principles – which confirmed reason as the foundation of all the knowledge – the Romantic Movement emphasised on the importance of individual subjectivity and emotional sensitivity. The nature of the Romantic Movement may be approached with the primary importance of free expression of the artist’s feelings. To express the feelings of the artists, Romantics believed that the content of the art should come from the imagination of the artist. Not specifically for Romanticism, there was widespread strong belief importance give to nature. This particularly affected the nature of the artist’s work, when the artist was surrounded by it – preferably alone. Contrary to the very social art of the Enlightenment, the Romantics were distrustful of the world, tended to be in close connection with nature. 10 Lines on Romanticism in English Romanticism is not an era that can be easily defined by its techniques. The principles of the age characterise this movement. Over science, reason and industrialisation Romanticism gave importance to spiritualism, emotions and nature. This period of artistic movement focused on freedom from authority over a traditional focus on society. The period of Neoclassicism corresponds with Romanticism only in the period. The ideals of the two movements Romanticism and Neoclassicism, were the direct opposite. Romantic music was technically adventurous and highly innovative. Along with showing the power of nature, many Romantic artists used their paintings to showcase natural disasters. Most famous Romantic art depicting natural disaster was The Raft of Medusa – a masterpiece by Theodore Gericault’s. Several paintings of the era dipped into fairy tales folklore and mythology for inspiration. FAQ’s on Romanticism Essay Question 1. Which is the largest defining painting of the era? Answer: Francisco Goya’s painting El Tres de Mayo 1808 (May 3) is considered one of the largest defining paintings of the era. Question 2.  What did Romanticism focus on? Answer: Romanticism emphasised nature, emotions, individuality and spiritualism over industrialisation, science and reasoning. Question 3. When did Romanticism begin? Answer: The Romantic Movement began approximately in the year 1770. Picture Dictionary English Speech English Slogans English Letter Writing English Essay Writing English Textbook Answers Types of Certificates ICSE Solutions Selina ICSE Solutions ML Aggarwal Solutions HSSLive Plus One HSSLive Plus Two Kerala SSLC Distance Education Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Ozymandias — Shelley’s Romanticism in Ozymandias Shelley’s Romanticism in Ozymandias Categories: Ozymandias About this sample Words: 677 | Published: Dec 12, 2018 Words: 677 | Page: 1 | 4 min read Cite this Essay Let us write you an essay from scratch 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours Get high-quality help Dr. Karlyna PhD Verified writer Expert in: Literature + 120 experts online By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email No need to pay just yet! Related Essays 1 pages / 589 words 3.5 pages / 1498 words 7 pages / 3276 words 4 pages / 1725 words Remember! This is just a sample. You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers. 121 writers online Still can’t find what you need? Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled Related Essays on Ozymandias Shelley, P. B. (1818). Ozymandias. The Examiner. Retrieved from doi:10.1353/vp.2015.0032 Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" is a masterful example of Romantic poetry that employs a variety of literary devices to convey its themes of impermanence and the hubris of human ambition. First published in 1818, the [...] The poems “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley and “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning are very different. However, they do have something in common – both poems are representations of their power. “Ozymandias” represents power as [...] The concept of impermanence is a familiar theme in the realm of human existence. All living beings undergo the processes of aging and eventual demise, and even the material possessions that humanity employs to enhance life [...] Percy Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias” (1818) is, in many ways, an outlier in his oeuvre: it is short, adhering to the fourteen line length of most traditional sonnets; its precise language, filled with concrete nouns and active [...] “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;/ Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (10) demands the pedestal of the statue of the previously named ancient ruler. Out of context a casual passerby of the king’s shattered sculpted [...] Related Topics By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails. Where do you want us to send this sample? By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy. Be careful. 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Instructions Followed To The Letter Deadlines Met At Every Stage Unique And Plagiarism Free 137 IMAGES PPT Romanticism Essay Romanticism Essay The Five I's of Romanticism Free Essay Example English Romanticism And Its Characteristics English Literature Essay Romanticism Literature Examples Free Essay Example VIDEO Tchaikovsky: 12 ROMANCES С.Лемешев Крысолов/S.Lemeshev S.Rachmaninov Romance Characteristics of Well-Written Personal Essay Стиль: Романтизм Precursors of Romanticism in English Literature II Pre-Romantic Poets and Poetry Characteristics What is Romanticism?|| DSC 7 Sem 3|| DU Regular/ Sol/ NCWEB COMMENTS Romanticism Romanticism. Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with ... Romanticism Romanticism is the attitude that characterized works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in the West from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. It emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the emotional, and the visionary. 10 Key Characteristics of Romanticism in Literature What are the characteristics of romanticism in literature? There are many, but we help you easily identify which are part of the powerful literary movement. ... and it can give you a leg up on literary essays and discussions. This period in literary history is fascinating and dramatic, and once you know the telltale signs, you'll be able to ... Romanticism in Literature: Definition and Examples Characteristics of Romanticism . Romantic literature is marked by six primary characteristics: celebration of nature, focus on the individual and spirituality, celebration of isolation and melancholy, interest in the common man, idealization of women, and personification and pathetic fallacy. ... His 1841 essay Self-Reliance is a seminal work ... Characteristics Of Romanticism What are the main characteristics of Romanticism in literature? ... Thematically, while Augustan work favored heroic epic, satire, and philosophical essays in verse, the Romantics wrote about ... A beginner's guide to Romanticism (article) Romantic music expressed the powerful drama of human emotion: anger and passion, but also quiet passages of pleasure and joy. So too, the French painter Eugène Delacroix and the Spanish artist Francisco Goya broke with the cool, cerebral idealism of Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' neoclassicism.They sought instead to respond to the cataclysmic upheavals that ... Romanticism Basic characteristics. Romanticism placed the highest importance on the freedom of the artists to authentically express their sentiments and ideas. ... Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his 1800 essay Gespräch über die Poesie ("Dialogue on Poetry"): I seek and find the romantic among the older moderns, in Shakespeare, in Cervantes, in Italian ... British Romanticism British Romanticism. An introduction to the poetic revolution that brought common people to literature's highest peaks. " [I]f Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all," proposed John Keats in an 1818 letter, at the age of 22. This could be called romantic in sentiment, lowercase r, meaning ... English literature English literature - Romanticism, Poetry, Novels: As a term to cover the most distinctive writers who flourished in the last years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th, "Romantic" is indispensable but also a little misleading: there was no self-styled "Romantic movement" at the time, and the great writers of the period did not call themselves Romantics. 6.1: The Romantic Period (1798-1832) Compare and contrast neoclassicism and Romanticism. List and define characteristics of Romanticism. Explain the significance of Wordsworth's and Coleridge's 1798 Lyrical Ballads, and outline the major tenets of Wordsworth's 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads. List, define, and give examples of typical forms of Romantic literature. Romanticism Analysis This collection of critical essays on Romanticism discusses poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and sociopolitical influences on the movement. Prickett, Stephen, ed., The Romantics, Holmes, Meier, 1981 ... Romanticism summary Romanticism, Literary, artistic, and philosophical movement that began in Europe in the 18th century and lasted roughly until the mid-19th century.In its intense focus on the individual consciousness, it was both a continuation of and a reaction against the Enlightenment.Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the ... What are the Most Important Characteristics of Romanticism? Characteristic 1: Emotion and Passion. The Romanticists were deeply in touch with their feelings. Emotion was one of the most crucial characteristics of the Romantic period. Wordsworth said that poetry began as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.". Romanticism Definition and Examples Romanticism. Romanticism was a movement that originated in Europe at the end of the 18th century and emphasized aesthetic experience and imagination. It was at its peak from 1800 to 1850 in the majority of the countries in which it gained a strong foothold. The movement influenced the visual arts, music, politics, and the social sciences. Romanticism Literature Romanticism in literature refers to a literary movement that emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, primarily in England and America. The movement emerged as a rejection of the values ... Romantic Poetry The classic essays on romanticism tend not to define the term but to survey the manifold and unsuccessful attempts to define it. In English poetry, however, we can give a more or less historical definition: Romanticism is a movement that can be dated as beginning with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads of… What characteristics of Romanticism are in Charles Lamb's essays Charles Lamb's essays exhibit key characteristics of Romanticism, such as a focus on personal experience, reflection, and the imagination. For instance, in "Old China," Lamb explores the tension ... Romantic Poetry's Definition and 9 Characteristics of the Form Romantic poetry is the product of emotions, sentiments and the voice at the heart of the poet. The Romantics were against the influence of reason in their poetry. They didn't give any preference to reason and intellect in their poetry. On the other hand, neoclassical poets believed in the influence of reason. 121 Romanticism Ideas & Essay Samples Nineteenth Century Romanticism. The works of early composers, writers, painters, and poets evolved from the onset, and in the increased quest for perfection, a spirit of romanticism was born. Gothic Romanticism in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", Nathaniel Hawthorn's "The Birthmark". An Exploration of Romanticism Through Art and Poetry In this lesson, students use art and poetry to explore and understand major characteristics of the Romantic period. First, students are introduced to the historical, societal, and literary characteristics of the Romantic period. Next, students deepen their understanding of Romanticism through an evaluation of William Wordsworth's definition of ... Romanticism Essay Romanticism Essay: Romanticism was an artistic, intellectual, literary and musical movement that took place in Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century and mid-nineteenth century.This artistic movement was at its peak in most areas in the approximate period of 1800 to 1850. The prominence can characterise Romanticism it gave to emotional sensitivity and individual subjectivity along ... Shelley's Romanticism in Ozymandias: [Essay Example], 677 words In conclusion, Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" is a poem that successfully encapsulates qualities captured in various literary works from the Romantic Period. With a simple story about a fragmented statue found in the desert, Shelley conveys the ideas of exoticism, mystery, and irony, expresses criticism regarding the political ... assignment essay homework phd report resume review speech thesis