Insights into Romanticism: An Artistic and Philosophical Movement

1. Introduction to Romanticism Background and Information

2. Romanticism • An international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined the ways in which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and their world • Centered in England and Germany • Occurred from 1770-1870 • Coincides with periods of political and economic upheaval- American (1776) and French (1789) revolutions and the onset of the Industrial Revolution

3. Imagination • It is thought of as the supreme instrument of the mind • It is our dynamic, creative power responsible for creating all art • Unites both reason and feeling • Enables us to “read” nature as a system of symbols (we not only see the world around us, but also in part create it)

4. Nature and Symbolism • Nature in itself is a work of art- even commonplace items • Nature is a healing power • Symbolism exists in nature’s emblematic language- it is inexpressible and infinite

5. Emotion and the Self • Emphasis on intuition, instincts and feelings • Attention to emotions is a necessary supplement to logical reason • Good poetry is the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” • One becomes the “artist-as-hero”

6. The Romantic Hero • Romanticism believes in the importance of the individual, the unique-even the eccentric • Hero has noble defiance or determination despite hardship • Hero has boldness rather than restraint

7. The Everyday and the Exotic • Paradox: An apparently self-contradictory idea or statement, which, upon closer inspection, contains a truth • Normal, mundane things appear with exotic, unusual things • Use of such paradoxical combinations are common in romanticism