Editing Romanticism (section)

===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.