The romanticism

The romanticism
Romanticism is a literary, philosophic, artistic movement
that start in Germany in 18th century.
It spread out all over the Europe at different times and
different ways.
It was born as a reaction against the enlightenment that
exalted the reason.

Countries of romanticism
Germany

Philosophical Romanticism

Italy

Patriotic Romanticism

England

Literary Romanticism

France

Revolutionary Romanticism

English Romanticism

In England the rise of Romanticism took

place in 1789 and coincides with the
publication of the Lyrical ballads
composed by Wordsworth and Coleridge
whose preface is considered the manifest
of English Romanticism
In this period Romanticism focused is
attention on Sensibility and Emotion, on
the use of autobiographical materials and
on the exaltation of the primitive and the
external nature

The Main Feature

Supremacy of feelings and emotion over reason
Appreciation of primitive life and common man
Deep love for nature
Tendency to melancholy
Growing interest in humble and everyday life
Attention to the country as a place where mans
relationship with nature was still intact, as
opposed to the industrial town

New taste for desolate

Love for ruins (gothic elements)
Prevalence of poetry
A new vision of the man as a hero
A vision of society as an evil force
Need to express emotion and sentiments
without the restriction of rules
Awareness of the need for more freedom in
imagination and fantasy

Wild
Love for Ruins

Middle Ages

Irrational
Supernatural

The nostalgia
Because of the industrial revolution the peasants moved
from the countryside into the city to work. The population
lived in bad conditions because jump from the country to
the town had been too rapid and violent and the population
unprepared. The response was a refusal of the industrial
revolution and a yearning to get back to grass roots. One of
the characteristics of romanticism was nostalgia, a good
feeling that something had gone. It produced a sense of
melancholy and sadness that found expression in the
production of pastoral poetry.

Imagination and childhood

The Romantics considered imagination as
something to understand the world of spirit
Imagination was also a creative power that only
the artists and children possessed
The children were closer to their divine origine and
to God because the were un spoilt by civilization
Childhood was admired and cultivated

The concept of
Nature

The nature represents a source of refuge in

which men tried to isolated them from the
world
Reflected feelings and was a source of
consolation, beauty in opposition to the
ugliness of the industrial period
It is a state of goodness in which there isnt the
presence of evil
Is a living reality

Pastoral poetry
The nostalgia for the past was expressed in the
pastoral poetry
This poetry expressed a wish for the simple life far
from the town
The Shepherd was a symbol of innocence and of an
unspoilt way of life
Themes are: the romantic pleasure of Rural Life,
Sense of Melancholy, Gravity and Deep Solitude
The most famous pastoral poetry is : Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas
Gray

The Ossianic Poetry

The ossianic poetry spread during the
Pre-Romantic period to Europe in 1765
with two volumes called The Works of
Ossian by Macpherson.
The taste for the primitive and the
barbaric led to a return to the original
literature.
The sources of inspiration were Nordic
and Germanic songs and legends but
also fairy tales and folk poetry

The themes of Ossianic poetry:

questions about destiny, love for
the night scenery, wild, stormy,the
virtues of the knights.
This poem really liked at the
romantics because it recalled the
past, so had a great influence on
the literature of the nineteenth
century.