Aim: What were the characteristics of the romantic movement?

1. Aim: What were the characteristics of the romantic movement? February 13, 2013

2. Reaction to the Enlightenment and Classicism • Enlightenment/classical philosophy stressed the logic and balance of mankind. Reason and restraint of emotion were emphasized. Only a select few were allowed to participate in cultural and intellectual life. • Why had some philosophers like Rousseau started to reject these ideas by the end of the Enlightenment?

3. Tenets of Romanticism (1790s-1840s) • The rationalism of the enlightenment was seen as destructive and repressive. Romantic artists, writers and musicians celebrated the spontaneous emotions, imagination and passions of the common man. How does this connect with the political changes that were happening in the late 18th- 19th centuries? • Romantic artists create works in which man drinks, dances, and behaves wildly. Man at his most unbridled is man at his best. • Romantic artists live out these ideas in their own lives (suicide, duels to the death, strange illnesses, long and uncombed hair, rejected materialism)

4. Romantic Literature • The poem and the novel become the most popular forms of written expression during this period, replacing the essays of the Enlightenment. Why would the romantic movement prefer poems and novels to essays?

5. Romantic Literature • Mary Shelly (British): Writes Frankenstein (1818). It is the story of a scientist Dr. Frankenstein who tries to play God by creating a living monster using parts of the dead and some animal pieces. Based on the film clip, how does the monster represent the values of the romantic movement?

6. Romantic Literature “For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils” • William Wordsworth (British): Great poet of the late 18th, early 19th centuries. Abandons flowery classical language for ordinary speech. One of his most famous poems is “Daffodils,” which shows the simple beauty of nature in terms that ordinary readers could appreciate. Why did romantic artists and writers have such an interest in nature?

7. Romantic Literature • Victor Hugo (French): Writes The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831). Reflects Hugo’s interest in fantastic characters and passionate human emotions. It is about a deformed bellringer in 15th century Paris in love with an exotic, highly sexual gypsy, who is also lusted after by a sexually repressed archdeacon.

8. Romantic Literature • Germaine de Stael (French): In On Germany (1810) she encourages the French to throw out old classical models, and match the spontaneity and enthusiasm of German writers. • Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin(French - better known as George Sand): Abandoned her husband, moved to Paris, wrote about a wide range of social and romantic themes, including her semi-autobiography Lelia. • Both of these authors argue that women must achieve sexual and personal freedom in order to realize their intellectual potential

9. Romantic Music • Romantic composers like Beethoven and Chopin triple the size of the traditional orchestra by adding wind instruments, percussion and more brass and strings. Trying to create a very different emotional effect from classical composers like Bach. Let’s compare: Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (1716 and 1723) vs. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 (1804-1808)