Romanticism
WHAT IS ROMANTICISM?
Reaction against …
- Reliance on reason and logic (the
Enlightenment) -- Reason alone was not a sufficient means of comprehending the
world
- Order, calm, harmony, balance
- Not everything can be reduced to
logical, mathematical models or universal principles
- Materialism and urban blight of
the Industrial Revolution
_______________________________
Celebration of …
- Feelings, emotions, passion,
instinct, and the senses
- Religion and faith (a heartfelt,
emotional religion)
- Nature (touched by supernatural
forces) and the natural
- The mysterious, strange, unknown,
and supernatural
- The unique and unclassifiable
(sights, sounds, moods, stories, customs, etc.)
- Dreams and hallucinations
- Spontaneity, nonconformity, subjectivity,
and imagination
- Individuality, subjectivity, and
intuition
- Genius: One not hemmed in by the
conventional, one who set own rules and laws (e.g. artist, writer, or a ruler
like Napoleon)
Interest in folk culture, ethnic
origins, exotic peoples, & the medieval era -- The Middle Ages were “in”
Fascination with the occult, evil,
and monsters
Preoccupation with erotic love
(usually unrequited) and death
A rejection of classical
conventions and forms
Favored dramatic, tragic themes
Subject Matter: Legends, the
exotic, nature, violence, wild animals
Color: Unrestrained, deep, rich
colors
Inspiration: Medieval & the
Baroque eras; Middle and Far East
Neoclassical painting was …
- Orderly, calm, and solemn
- Often based on Greek/Roman
history and mythology
- Intended to be morally uplifting and inspirational
•Reaction against
Enlightenment & exclusive reliance on reason -- Reason alone is not
sufficient to understand world!
•Emphasis of feelings, emotion,
passion, & instinct
•Celebration of nature
•Revival of religion and
spirituality
•Interest in things unknown,
mysterious, & supernatural
•Isolation of individual from rest
of society
•Interest in exotic peoples and
cultures (esp. Middle Ages)
•Fascination w/ love (esp.
unrequited), time, and death
•Conception of genius as one not
bound by traditional customs or rules (e.g. writers, painters, Napoleon)
ROMANTICISM IN LITERATURE
Poets expressed their emotional
response to nature
- William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834)
- Lord Byron
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- John Keats
European Romantic, pseudomedieval fiction
having a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror. Its heyday was the 1790s,
but it underwent frequent revivals in subsequent centuries. Called Gothic
because its imaginative impulse was drawn from medieval buildings and ruins,
such novels commonly used such settings as castles or monasteries equipped with
subterranean passages, dark battlements, hidden panels, and trapdoors. The
vogue was initiated in England by Horace Walpole's
immensely successful Castle of Otranto
(1765). His most respectable follower was Ann Radcliffe,
whose Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Italian (1797) are among
the best examples of the genre. A more sensational type of Gothic romance
exploiting horror and violence flourished in Germany and was introduced to England
by Matthew Gregory Lewis with The Monk (1796). Other landmarks of Gothic
fiction are William Beckford's Oriental romance Vathek (1786) and
Charles Robert Maturin's story of an Irish Faust, Melmoth the Wanderer
(1820). The classic horror stories Frankenstein (1818), by Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker, are in the
Gothic tradition but without the specifically Gothic trappings.
Easy targets for satire, the early Gothic
romances died of their own extravagances of plot, but Gothic atmospheric
machinery continued to haunt the fiction of such major writers as the Brontë
sisters, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even Dickens in Bleak
House and Great Expectations. In the second half of the 20th
century, the term was applied to paperback romances having the same kind of
themes and trappings similar to the originals.
Frankenstein explores the impact of raising the dead using modern scientific
knowledge about chemistry and electricity.
Dr. Frankenstein, a young Swiss medical student, discovers the secret of
resurrecting life. He assembles body
parts from graveyards and hospitals to use to build his creature.
In early 19th century man seemed well on his way toward mastering the physical universe
Frankenstein’s creature has feelings and intelligence, but his existence is miserable: Without family & friends, his appearance horrifies and repulses people. Abandoned by Dr. Frankenstein, the monster exacts revenge by killing his younger brother William. When the doctor refused to make the monster a mate, the monster killed his best friend and his new bride Elizabeth.
But where were my friends and
relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with
smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind
vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had
been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being
resembling me. . . . What was I?
The Monster Frankenstein; or,
The Modern Prometheus, 1818
The forms of the beloved death flit
before me, and I hasten to their arms. Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in
tranquility, and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one
of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I
have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.
Victor Frankenstein to explorer
Robert Walton
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818