|
Toward a Definition of Romanticism |
|
adapted from Steven Kreis Because the expression Romanticism is a phenomenon of immense scope, embracing as it does, literature, politics, history, philosophy and the arts in general, there has never been much agreement and much confusion as to what the word means. It has, in fact, been used in so many different ways that some scholars have argued that the best thing we could do with the expression is to abandon it once and for all. However, the phenomenon of Romanticism would not become less complex by simply throwing away its label of convenience.
Since no single figure or literary school displays all the characteristics considered to be "Romantic," any general definitions tend to be imprecise. In addition, these characteristics are often discerned in artists and cultural movements not usually so designated. They are not, in fact, the exclusive property of the Romantic period, but it is here that they are dominant and give identity to an era. Sturm und Drang: Storm and Stress
The "savage" is noble, childhood is good and the emotions inspired by both beliefs causes the heart to soar. On the contrary, urban life and the
commitment to "getting and spending," generates a fear and distrust of the world. If
humans are inherently sinful, reason must restrain their passions, but if they are naturally
good, then in an appropriate environment, their emotions can be trusted
(Blake -- "bathe in the waters of life").
The idea of humanity's natural goodness and the stress on emotion also contributed to the development of Romantic individualism, that is, the belief that what is special in a person is to be valued over what is representative (the latter oftentimes connected with the conventions imposed on people by "civilized society." If a person may properly express their unique emotional self because its essence is good, they are also likely to assume also that its conflicts and corruptions are a matter of great import and a source of fascination to themselves and others. So, the Romantic delights in self-analysis. Both William Wordsworth (in The
Prelude)
poets very different from one another, felt the need to write lengthy poems of self-dramatization. The self that Byron dramatized, a projection not identical with his own personality, was especially dear to the Romantic mind: the outcast wanderer, heroic but accursed, often on some desperate quest, in the tradition of Cain or the Flying Dutchman.
and Herman Melville's Ahab are similar Romantic pilgrims.
For English literature the most significant expression of a Romantic commitment to emotion occurs in Wordsworth's preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1800), where he maintains that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Although Wordsworth qualifies this assertion by suggesting that the poet is a reflective man who recollects his emotion "in tranquility," the emphasis on spontaneity, on feeling, and the use of the term overflow mark sharp diversions from the earlier ideals of judgment and restraint. Searching for a fresh source of this spontaneous feeling, Wordsworth rejects the Neoclassic idea of the appropriate subject for serious verse and turns to the simplicities of rustic life "because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." That interaction with nature has for many of the Romantic poets mystical overtones. Nature is apprehended by them not only as an exemplar and source of vivid physical beauty but as a manifestation of spirit in the universe as well. In Tintern Abbey Wordsworth suggests that nature has gratified his physical being, excited his emotions, and ultimately allowed him "a sense sublime/Of something far more deeply interfused," of a spiritual force immanent not only in the forms of nature but "in the mind of man." Though not necessarily in the same
terms, a similar connection between the world of nature and the world of the spirit is also
made by Blake, Coleridge, Byron and Shelley In their desire to identify with a spiritual force, the Romantics often expressed the Faustian aspiration after the sublime and the wonderful. Committed to change, flux rather than stasis, they long to believe that humans are perfectible, that moral as well as mechanical progress is possible. Although the burst of hope and enthusiasm that marked the early stages of the French Revolution was soon muted, its echoes lingered through much of the 19th century and even survive in the 20th century. If the Romantic often see their enemy in the successful bourgeois, the Philistine with a vested interest in social stability, political revolution is not always their goal. Their admiration for the natural, the organic, which in art leads to the overthrow of the Classical rules and the development of a unique form for each work, in politics may lead them to subordinate the individual to the state and insist that the needs of the whole govern the activities of the parts. Although these characteristics of Romanticism suggest something of its nature, they are far from exhaustive. The phenomenon is too diverse and too contradictory to admit of an easy definition. As Lovejoy suggested, "typical manifestations of the spiritual essence of Romanticism have been variously conceived to be a passion for moonlight, for red waistcoats, for Gothic churches . . . for talking exclusively about oneself, for hero-worship, for losing oneself in an ecstatic contemplation of nature." Internet Resources Romantic Circles |
Originally, Romanticism
referred to the characteristics of romances, whose extravagance carried somewhat pejorative
connotations. But in the 18th century the term came to designate a new kind of exotic
landscape which evoked feelings of pleasant melancholy. The term Romantic as a designation for
a school of literature opposed to the Classic was first used by the German critic Karl Wilhelm
Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) at the beginning of the 19th century. From Germany, this
meaning was carried to England and France.
and Lord
Byron (in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage),
S. T.
Coleridge's Mariner
.