Editing Romanticism (section)

==Defining Romanticism==

===Basic characteristics===
Romanticism placed the highest importance on the [[freedom]] of the artists to authentically express their sentiments and ideas. Romantics like the German painter [[Caspar David Friedrich]] believed that an artist's emotions should dictate their formal approach; Friedrich went as far as declaring that "the artist's feeling is his law".<ref>Novotny, 96</ref> The Romantic poet [[William Wordsworth]], thinking along similar lines, wrote that poetry should begin with "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then "recollect[s] in tranquility", enabling the poet to find a suitably unique form for representing such feelings.<ref>From the Preface to the 2nd edition of ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]'', quoted Day, 2</ref>

The Romantics never doubted that emotionally motivated art would find suitable, harmonious modes for expressing its vital content—if, that is, the artist steered clear of moribund conventions and distracting precedents. [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] and others thought there were natural laws the imagination of born artists followed instinctively when these individuals were, so to speak, "left alone" during the creative process.<ref>Day, 3</ref> These "natural laws" could support a wide range of different formal approaches: as many, perhaps, as there were individuals making personally meaningful works of art. Many Romantics believed that works of artistic genius were created "[[ex nihilo]]", "from nothing", without recourse to existing models.<ref name="Ruthven01p40">Ruthven (2001) p. 40 quote: "Romantic ideology of literary authorship, which conceives of the text as an autonomous object produced by an individual genius."</ref><ref name="Spearing87">Spearing (1987) quote: "Surprising as it may seem to us, living after the Romantic movement has transformed older ideas about literature, in the Middle Ages authority was prized more highly than originality."</ref><ref name="Eco94">Eco (1994) p. 95 quote:
Much art has been and is repetitive. The concept of absolute originality is a contemporary one, born with Romanticism; classical art was in vast measure serial, and the "modern" avant-garde (at the beginning of this century) challenged the Romantic idea of "creation from nothingness", with its techniques of collage, mustachios on the Mona Lisa, art about art, and so on.</ref> This idea is often called "romantic originality".<ref>Waterhouse (1926), throughout; Smith (1924); Millen, Jessica ''Romantic Creativity and the Ideal of Originality: A Contextual Analysis'', in [http://eview.anu.edu.au/cross-sections/vol6/pdf/ch07.pdf ''Cross-sections'', The Bruce Hall Academic Journal – Volume VI, 2010 PDF] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160314220913/http://eview.anu.edu.au/cross-sections/vol6/pdf/ch07.pdf |date=2016-03-14 }}; Forest Pyle, The Ideology of Imagination: Subject and Society in the Discourse of Romanticism (Stanford University Press, 1995) p. 28.</ref> The translator and prominent Romantic [[August Wilhelm Schlegel]] argued in his ''Lectures on Dramatic Arts and Letters'' that the most valuable quality of human nature is its tendency to diverge and diversify.<ref>{{Cite book|title=European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents|last=Breckman|first=Warren|date=2008|publisher=Bedford/St. Martins|others=Rogers D. Spotswood Collection.|isbn=978-0-312-45023-6|edition= 1st |location=Boston|oclc=148859077}}</ref>
[[File:William Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Plate 35, "The Little Girl Found" (Bentley 36) - Google Art Project (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|[[William Blake]], ''[[The Little Girl Found]]'', from ''[[Songs of Innocence and of Experience|Songs of Innocence and Experience]]'', 1794]]

According to [[Isaiah Berlin]], Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals".<ref>Berlin, 92</ref>

Romantic artists also shared a strong belief in the importance and inspirational qualities of Nature. Romantics were distrustful of cities and social conventions. They deplored [[Stuart Restoration|Restoration]] and [[Enlightenment Era]] artists who were largely concerned with depicting and critiquing social relations, thereby neglecting the relationship between people and Nature. Romantics generally believed a close connection with Nature was beneficial for human beings, especially for individuals who broke off from society in order to encounter the natural world by themselves. 

Romantic literature was frequently written in a distinctive, personal "voice". As critic [[M. H. Abrams]] has observed, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves."<ref>Day 3–4; quotation from M.H. Abrams, quoted in Day, 4</ref> This quality in Romantic literature, in turn, influenced the approach and reception of works in other media; it has seeped into everything from critical evaluations of individual style in painting, fashion, and music, to the [[auteur]] movement in modern filmmaking.

===Etymology===
The group of words with the root "Roman" in the various European languages, such as "romance" and "Romanesque", has a complicated history. By the 18th century, European languages—notably German, French and Slavic languages—were using the term "Roman" in the sense of the English word "[[novel]]", i.e. a work of popular narrative fiction.<ref name="Schellinger2014">{{cite book|last=Schellinger|first=Paul|title=Encyclopedia of the Novel|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FPdRAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA942|date=8 April 2014|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-91826-2|page=942|chapter=Novel and Romance: Etymologies}}</ref> This usage derived from the term [[Romance languages#Name|"Romance languages"]], which referred to [[vernacular]] (or popular) language in contrast to formal [[Latin]].<ref name="Schellinger2014"/> Most such novels took the form of "[[chivalric romance]]", tales of adventure, devotion and honour.<ref name="Saul2009">{{cite book|last=Saul|first=Nicholas|title=The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vy5AAw9ODMgC&pg=PA1|date=9 July 2009|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-84891-6|pages=1–}}</ref>

The founders of Romanticism, critics (and brothers) [[August Wilhelm Schlegel]] and [[Friedrich Schlegel]], began to speak of ''romantische Poesie'' ("romantic poetry") in the 1790s, contrasting it with "classic" but in terms of spirit rather than merely dating. 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 poetry, in that age of chivalry, love and fable, from which the phenomenon and the word itself are derived.<ref>Ferber, 6–7</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Athenaeum|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AGgyAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA122|year=1800|publisher=Bey F. Vieweg dem Älteren|page=122|quote=Ich habe ein bestimmtes Merkmahl des Gegensatzes zwischen dem Antiken und dem Romantischen aufgestellt. Indessen bitte ich Sie doch, nun nicht sogleich anzunehmen, daß mir das Romantische und das Moderne völlig gleich gelte. Ich denke es ist etwa ebenso verschieden, wie die Gemählde des Raphael und Correggio von den Kupferstichen die jetzt Mode sind. Wollen Sie sich den Unterschied völlig klar machen, so lesen Sie gefälligst etwa die Emilia Galotti die so unaussprechlich modern und doch im geringsten nicht romantisch ist, und erinnern sich dann an Shakspeare, in den ich das eigentliche Zentrum, den Kern der romantischen Fantasie setzen möchte. Da suche und finde ich das Romantische, bey den ältern Modernen, bey Shakspeare, Cervantes, in der italiänischen Poesie, in jenem Zeitalter der Ritter, der Liebe und der Mährchen, aus welchem die Sache und das Wort selbst herstammt. Dieses ist bis jetzt das einzige, was einen Gegensatz zu den classischen Dichtungen des Alterthums abgeben kann; nur diese ewig frischen Blüthen der Fantasie sind würdig die alten Götterbilder zu umkränzen. Und gewiß ist es, daß alles Vorzüglichste der modernen Poesie dem Geist und selbst der Art nach dahinneigt; es müßte denn eine Rückkehr zum Antiken seyn sollen. Wie unsre Dichtkunst mit dem Roman, so fing die der Griechen mit dem Epos an und löste sich wieder darin auf.}}</ref>

The modern sense of the term spread more widely in France by its persistent use by [[Germaine de Staël]] in her ''[[De l'Allemagne]]'' (1813), recounting her travels in Germany.<ref name="Ferber, 7">Ferber, 7</ref> In England Wordsworth wrote in a preface to his poems of 1815 of the "romantic harp" and "classic lyre",<ref name="Ferber, 7"/> but in 1820 [[Lord Byron|Byron]] could still write, perhaps slightly disingenuously,

:I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a great struggle about what they call 'Classical' and 'Romantic', terms which were not subjects of classification in England, at least when I left it four or five years ago.<ref>Christiansen, 241.</ref>

It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, and in 1824 the [[Académie française]] took the wholly ineffective step of issuing a decree condemning it in literature.<ref>Christiansen, 242.</ref>

===Period===
The period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. [[Margaret Drabble]] described it in literature as taking place "roughly between 1770 and 1848",<ref>in her ''Oxford Companion'' article, quoted by Day, 1</ref> and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, [[M. H. Abrams]] placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, perhaps a little later than some other critics.<ref>Day, 1–5</ref> Others have proposed 1780–1830.<ref>{{Cite book|title = British Literature 1780–1830|last1 = Mellor|first1 = Anne|publisher = Harcourt Brace & Co./Wadsworth|year = 1996|isbn = 978-1-4130-2253-7|location = NY|last2 = Matlak|first2 = Richard}}</ref> In other fields and other countries the period denominated as Romantic can be considerably different; [[Romantic music|musical Romanticism]], for example, is generally regarded as only having ceased as a major artistic force as late as 1910, but in an extreme extension the ''[[Four Last Songs]]'' of [[Richard Strauss]] are described stylistically as "Late Romantic" and were composed in 1946–1948.<ref>Edward F. Kravitt, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=WpR6Ja9eQzYC&dq=%22Four+Last+Songs%22+%22Late+Romantic%22&pg=PA47 The Lied: Mirror of Late Romanticism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221204111545/https://books.google.com/books?id=WpR6Ja9eQzYC&pg=PA47&dq=%22Four+Last+Songs%22+%22Late+Romantic%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FC92T8K_JIWA8gPP3JCeDQ&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Four%20Last%20Songs%22%20%22Late%20Romantic%22&f=false |date=2022-12-04 }}'' (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996): 47. {{ISBN|0-300-06365-2}}.</ref> However, in most fields the Romantic period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier.

The early period of the Romantic era was a time of war, with the French Revolution (1789–1799) followed by the [[Napoleonic Wars]] until 1815. These wars, along with the political and social turmoil that went along with them, served as the background for Romanticism.<ref name="ReferenceA">Greenblatt et al., ''Norton Anthology of English Literature'', eighth edition, "The Romantic Period – Volume D" (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2006): {{Page needed|date=January 2016}}</ref> The key generation of French Romantics born between 1795 and 1805 had, in the words of one of their number, [[Alfred de Vigny]], been "conceived between battles, attended school to the rolling of drums".<ref>Johnson, 147, inc. quotation</ref> According to [[Jacques Barzun]], there were three generations of Romantic artists. The first emerged in the 1790s and 1800s, the second in the 1820s, and the third later in the century.<ref>Barzun, 469</ref>

===Context and place in history===
The more precise characterization and specific definition of Romanticism has been the subject of debate in the fields of [[intellectual history]] and [[literary history]] throughout the 20th century, without any great measure of consensus emerging. That it was part of the [[Counter-Enlightenment]], a reaction against the [[Age of Enlightenment]], is generally accepted in current scholarship. Its relationship to the [[French Revolution]], which began in 1789 in the very early stages of the period, is clearly important, but highly variable depending on geography and individual reactions. Most Romantics can be said to be broadly progressive in their views, but a considerable number always had, or developed, a wide range of conservative views,<ref>Day, 1–3; the arch-conservative and Romantic is [[Joseph de Maistre]], but many Romantics swung from youthful radicalism to conservative views in middle age, for example Wordsworth. [[Samuel Palmer]]'s only published text was a short piece opposing the [[Repeal of the corn laws]].</ref> and nationalism was in many countries strongly associated with Romanticism, as discussed in detail below.

In philosophy and the history of ideas, Romanticism was seen by Isaiah Berlin as disrupting for over a century the classic Western traditions of rationality and the idea of moral absolutes and agreed values, leading "to something like the melting away of the very notion of objective truth",<ref>Berlin, 57</ref> and hence not only to nationalism, but also [[fascism]] and [[totalitarianism]], with a gradual recovery coming only after World War II.<ref>Several of Berlin's pieces dealing with this theme are collected in the work referenced. See in particular: Berlin, 34–47, 57–59, 183–206, 207–37.</ref> For the Romantics, Berlin says, <blockquote>in the realm of ethics, politics, aesthetics it was the authenticity and sincerity of the pursuit of inner goals that mattered; this applied equally to individuals and groups—states, nations, movements. This is most evident in the aesthetics of romanticism, where the notion of eternal models, a Platonic vision of ideal beauty, which the artist seeks to convey, however imperfectly, on canvas or in sound, is replaced by a passionate belief in spiritual freedom, individual creativity. The painter, the poet, the composer do not hold up a mirror to nature, however ideal, but invent; they do not imitate (the doctrine of mimesis), but create not merely the means but the goals that they pursue; these goals represent the self-expression of the artist's own unique, inner vision, to set aside which in response to the demands of some "external" voice—church, state, public opinion, family friends, arbiters of taste—is an act of betrayal of what alone justifies their existence for those who are in any sense creative.<ref>Berlin, 57–58</ref><!-- yes, 2 semi-colons & about 15 commas in the quote --></blockquote>
[[File:John William Waterhouse - The Lady of Shalott - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|left|[[John William Waterhouse]], ''[[The Lady of Shalott (painting)|The Lady of Shalott]]'', 1888, after a poem by [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Tennyson]]]]

[[Arthur Lovejoy]] attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of defining Romanticism in his seminal article "On the Discrimination of Romanticisms" in his ''Essays in the [[History of ideas|History of Ideas]]'' (1948); some scholars see Romanticism as essentially continuous with the present, some like [[Robert Hughes (critic)|Robert Hughes]] see in it the inaugural moment of [[modernity]],<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.worldandi.com/newhome/public/2004/february/bkpub1.asp| title = Linda Simon ''The Sleep of Reason'' by Robert Hughes| date = 12 July 2021}}</ref> while writers of the 19th Century such as [[François-René de Chateaubriand|Chateaubriand]], [[Novalis]] and Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] rationalism—a "Counter-Enlightenment"—<ref>''[[Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder]]'', Pimlico, 2000 {{ISBN|0-7126-6492-0}} was one of [[Isaiah Berlin]]'s many publications on the Enlightenment and its enemies that did much to popularise the concept of a Counter-Enlightenment movement that he characterised as [[Relativism|relativist]], [[Rationalism|anti-rationalist]], [[Vitalism|vitalist]] and organic,</ref><ref>[[Darrin McMahon|Darrin M. McMahon]], "The Counter-Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France" ''Past and Present'' No. 159 (May 1998:77–112) p. 79 note 7.</ref> to be associated most closely with [[German Romanticism]]. Another early definition comes from [[Charles Baudelaire]]: "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Salon_de_1846_%28Curiosit%C3%A9s_esth%C3%A9tiques%29#II._.E2.80.94_Qu.E2.80.99est-ce_que_le_romantisme.3F |title=Baudelaire's speech at the "Salon des curiosités Estethiques |language=fr |publisher=Fr.wikisource.org |access-date=2010-08-24}}</ref>

The end of the Romantic era is marked in some areas by a new style of [[Realism (arts)|Realism]], which affected literature, especially the novel and drama, painting, and even music, through [[Verismo]] opera. This movement was led by France, with [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]] and [[Gustave Flaubert|Flaubert]] in literature and [[Gustave Courbet|Courbet]] in painting; [[Stendhal]] and [[Francisco Goya|Goya]] were important precursors of Realism in their respective media. However, Romantic styles, now often representing the established and safe style against which Realists rebelled, continued to flourish in many fields for the rest of the century and beyond. In music such works from after about 1850 are referred to by some writers as "Late Romantic" and by others as "Neoromantic" or "Postromantic", but other fields do not usually use these terms; in English literature and painting the convenient term "Victorian" avoids having to characterise the period further.

In northern Europe, the Early Romantic visionary optimism and belief that the world was in the process of great change and improvement had largely vanished, and some art became more conventionally political and polemical as its creators engaged polemically with the world as it was. Elsewhere, including in very different ways the United States and Russia, feelings that great change was underway or just about to come were still possible. Displays of intense emotion in art remained prominent, as did the exotic and historical settings pioneered by the Romantics, but experimentation with form and technique was generally reduced, often replaced with meticulous technique, as in the poems of Tennyson or many paintings. If not realist, late 19th-century art was often extremely detailed, and pride was taken in adding authentic details in a way that earlier Romantics did not trouble with. Many Romantic ideas about the nature and purpose of art, above all the pre-eminent importance of originality, remained important for later generations, and often underlie modern views, despite opposition from theorists. {{Citation needed|date=February 2025}}