The Romantic Period
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Jane Austen
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
William Wordsworth
Nature Poetry
Romanticism Culture: what's behind the emotion of a Romantic
Romanticism was more than an era in history or a specific culture; it was a way of being. We talked about the themes of the Romantic era in class, but we didn’t cover in depth as to why these people in this period were so emotionally developed.
Although many poems were unpublished during the war, from the fall of the Bastille in 1789 to the defeat at Waterloo in 1815, war was the most important part of British life, and was what the major Romantic writers like Wordsworth were concerned with (Bennet 1). The fall of the Bastille during the French Revolution was a symbol for Romantics as the “overthrow of the feudal, tyrannical rule of the Bourbons, and poets celebrated it in these terms immediately and for some years to follow” (4). Romantics “rejected those aspects of the French Revolution like the Reign of Terror and which seemed to them to have sprung from the heads of the Enlightenment itself” (“Romanticism”). The French Revolution inspired British poets and Romantics to create a new way of being, and the Romantic Movement was almost a reaction against war and the “methods and ideals of the preceding eighteenth-century Enlightenment” (Brinton 4).
Romanticism was the “new thought, the critical idea and the creative effort necessary to cope with the old ways of confronting experience…and an indicative of an age of crisis that would dominate European culture for the next century” (“Romanticism 10). Romantics did what was completely opposite of the Enlightenment. Whereas the famous quote of the Enlightenment was “I think therefore I am,” the Romantic quote may have been “I feel therefore I am” (8). Romantics thought mostly of the emotional self expression through “art, music, poetry, drama, and literature,” whereas the Enlightenment covered only “logic, balance, and rationalism” (Brinton 9). Also, the eras had two very different approaches to love. People from the Enlightenment defined love as “the rubbing together of two membranes” while Romantics thought of love as a “mystery and magic of sexuality in an extensive cult of love” (10). The Enlightenment and Romantic styles of being differ so much that “present-day psychologists have gone so far as to contend that the Enlightenment and Romantic styles of sensibility map onto two fundamentally different personality types” (12). The culture of the era may have started out of spite of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment way of thinking, but it has shown people the right of expression and creativity through the arts, and it has influenced the minds of today.
“Discover yourself -- express yourself, cried the Romantic artist. Play your own music, write your own drama, paint your own personal vision, live, love and suffer in your own way. So instead of the motto, "Dare to know!" take up the battle cry, "Dare to be!" (Kreis 9).
Works Cited
Bennett, Betty T. "British War Poetry in the Age of Romanticism 1793-1815 - Electronic Editions - Romantic Circles." Home - Romantic Circles. Ed. Neil Fraistat and Steven E. Jones. University of Maryland. Web. 03 Apr. 2011.
Brians, Paul. "Romanticism." Washington State University - Pullman, Washington. 11 Mar. 1998. Web. 04 Apr. 2011.
Brinton, Crane. "Romanticism." Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Donald M. Borchert. 2nd ed. Vol. 8. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006. 485-489. Gale World History In Context. Web. 4 Apr. 2011.
Kreis, Steven. "The Romantic Era." The History Guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History. Florida Atlantic University, 2001. Web. 03 Apr. 2011.
"Romanticism." Romanticism. Brooklyn College., 12 Feb. 2009. Web. 03 Apr. 2011.
"The Tree of Crows by Caspar David Friedrich." History in Context: World. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale World History In Context. Web. 4 Apr. 2011.
Romanticism in the Arts
Illustrations created during the Romantic period centered on themes such as nature and the creative power of the human mind. William Blake was a great artist who was able to capture the themes of his poetry into his works of art. He was better known for his poetry rather than his art because his style greatly differed from the common style of art during the romantic era. In a scholarly journal about Blake it states, “When you look at Blake's paintings and watercolors you'll readily understand why his art was neglected, dismissed or vigorously rejected throughout his life and for decades thereafter. Colors scream with a flame-like quality. His men and women look like creatures from outer space. And his image of God is that of an old man with bristling looks and muscular arms that further emphasize unreality” (Stern). Blake was very interested in prophecy, which was a common topic of poetry during the era. He focused on futuristic themes that made his artwork stick out in a negative way to the public.
One of Blake’s creations known as Age Teaching Youth foreshadows the theme of nature. An analysis of the picture states, “It has been suggested that the leaf and tendril motif on the dress of the youth in the foreground (who seems to be drawing) identifies him as representative of a mind limited to nature and its imitation. The old man might represent the law, which is contradicted by the girl who, gesturing heavenwards towards the infinite, might represent imagination” (Tate Collection…). The child in the painting would represent a more optimistic view of the world appealing to the child’s innocence in society foreshadowing Blake’s poem called From Songs of Innocence. The elderly man could represent the meaning of reality in the world and foreshadow one of the meanings of Blake’s poem called From Songs of Experience. The painting parallels and contradicts nature and the aspect of innocence verses experience.
Another of Blake’s works called Lear and Cordelia in Prison portrays a scene in the Shakespearian play King Lear. The painting shows when Edmund kept Cordelia and Lear imprisoned. A document about romantic prisons states, “The prison was the central institutional means for silencing dissent in 1790 Britain” it further goes on to state, “ The birth of ‘prison literature’ is twin to the birth of British Romanticism”(Bugg 37). Blake’s painting foreshadows “prison literature” and reveals the theme in writing during the era known as the creative power of human kind. Prison literature was written in a time when many poets and writers feared imprisonment and the literature was written by poets and writers who experienced life in a jail (Bugg 37). Wordsworth uses the idea of “mind in a state of confinement” in his works and Blake portrays this idea in Lear and Cordelia in Prison (Bugg 44).
Works Cited:
Blake, William. Age Teaching Youth. 1785-90. Tate Collection. Tate Online. Web.4 Apr.2011.
Blake, William. Lear and Cordelia in Prison. 1779. Tate Collection. Tate Online. Web. 4 Apr.2011.
Bugg, John. "Close confinement: John Thelwall and the Romantic prison." European Romantic Review. 37-56. 2009. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Apr. 2011.
Stern, Fred. "William Blake, Visionary Rebel." World & I 24.8 (2009): 1. MAS Ultra – School Edition. EBSCO. Web. 3 Apr. 2011.
"Tate Collection: British Art and International Modern and Contemporary Art." Tate: British and International Modern and Contemporary Art. Web. 05 Apr. 2011.