Term: Romanticism

It originally meant " typical of the old romances" , but form the half I the 18th century the world
began to acquire some of its modern connotations, or better something marked by feeling and
especially by feelings such as loneliness, melancholy capable of stirring man's best emotions.
James Thomson(1700-1748) began to describe natural country scenes in simple language, often
with a pervading sadness.
Romantic landscapes which arose a feeling of sadness, melancholia and nostalgia.
The word romantic was used for the first time by Goethe and Schiller in opposition to classical.
Rousseau and Madame de Stael contributed to the diffusion of Romanticism: he laid the basis of
the Romantic cult of nature and belief in man's natural goodness and his consequent corruption
by society (le myth du bon sauvage in French also here p.170) whereas she made known
German philosophy and literature and started the Roamntic vogue in Italy (debate with
Leopardi).
Le Roman: un nouveau genre narratif, un uvre en vers (octosyllabes rime plate) crit en
langue vulgaire conu pour tre lu par des lecteurs solitaire, ou voix haute, et sour tout
rserve un public cultiv.
Romantic revolution
Values of individual's sensibility: mind's capacity to react to sounds, sights and different
sensations. The critical term that came to include most of the new ideas about art and human
perceptions was the sublime: an aesthetic and philosophical ideal as given in Edmund Burke's
treatise, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful(1757)
was set against the classical ideal of beautiful. Beautiful in Neoclassicism was identified with the
one of the Ancient Greek classical harmony, balance and regularity in form, whereas sublime
indicated strength, irregularity and fear.
Pre-Romantic tendencies were: a predilection for night, darkness and death, the cult of ruins,
terror and fantasies, exotic, dream-like poems and tales, interest in popular and dialect literature,
interest in medieval and northern literature and folklore. Most of these tendencies and interest
came to be called Gothic.
The forms of the revolutionary spirit brought by French Revolution:
-Political and social revolution in America and France;
-Ideological revolution: revolt against all forms of authority conflicting with human dignity and
free choice, in particular criticism of the social results of the Industrial Revolution, also radicalism,
anarchism, socialism, sexual freedom and early feminism;
-Artistic revolution against neoclassical rules in favour of the free expression of personal feeling.
Romantic themes
The qualities of a poet were: instinct, feeling, intuition, knowledge of the heart, all essential
features to acquire knowledge of the things, of the truth.
Imagination played the foremost role, because it was able to connect the individual mind and
the universe, the human and the divine, mortality and eternity, emotions felt and poetry written.
The imagination was the central point of the creating process and of interaction between the
humans mind and the physical world, for Blake imagination was a creative power, and the only
means of knowing reality.

Nature
Romantic writers endowed the natural scene with life, passion and feeling, also seen as God,
lover or dear friend, usually we find this aspect in Wordsworth's poems which begins with an
accurate description that leads to focus on thoughts about man and his role in the universe.
The commonplace and supernatural
Simple scenes acquire a new value in Wordsworth's poems, preventing us from seeing thing as
usually they are. The universe is seen as a living entity that could reveal itself to man on two
levels: the visible (Nature) and the invisible (the supernatural) whom are part dreams,
nightmares and visions.
Individualism-introspection
The reality was conceived subjective, and the individualism was reflected in isolation from the
society in nature, revolt against the establishment, and exile from the mother country.
Two heroes: fascination with strange, uncommon and the forbidden.
The Romantic hero is a glorious failure, haunted by remorse for his faults and wasted
opportunities. Most Romantic writers were attracted by the outlaws of religion, myth, legend, or
history: Satan, Cain, Prometheus, Faust and Renaissance or modern tyrants like Napoleon.
Starving for the infinite (philosophy and art)
It was the desire to exceed human limitations, to become glorious, but this gloriously impossible
task, artist's mission, search for infinity, is destined to fail, and this makes the poet a prophet-like
figure which must awake the common man and make him realise both the potential of the
human kind and the healing qualities of nature.