The Romantic Revolution

• A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime

and Beautiful (1757)

Pre-romantic sensibility was characterised by:

• a predilection for night, darkness and death;

• the cult of ruins;

• terror and fantasies;

• an interest in mediaeval and northern literature and folklore.

The majority of these trends and interests were known as Gothic.

In the Second Half of the 18th century…

• The French Revolution and the impact it had on British culture and

society.

The revolutionary spirit took on various forms:

• a political and social revolution;

• a revolt against all forms of authority conflicting with human dignity;

• the free expression of personal feelings.

The Romantic Revolution

Romanticism was a truly European movement:

•Germany: Goethe, Schiller, Herder (Sturm und Drang);

•France: Madame de Staël, Hugo;

•Italy: Berchet, Manzoni, Foscolo.

European Romanticism

• Feeling vs Rationality instinct, feeling, intuition.

Feelings and emotions were essential steps towards true knowledge.

• Imagination the central point of the process of creation.

It connected the mind of the individual with the physical world.

Romantic Themes and Conventions

• A love of nature works contained many descriptions of nature.

Romantic writers endowed natural scenes with life, passion and feeling.

• Commonplace and supernatural ordinary life, dreams, nightmare

and visions were cultivated by the Romantics.

The universe was a living entity, which could reveal itself to man on two

levels: the visible (nature) and the invisible (the supernatural).

Romantic Themes and Conventions

• Individualism introspection, individualism.

The Romantics’ individualism was also reflected in isolation from

society.

• The ‘dark’ Romantic hero a glorious failure, haunted by remorse

for his faults and wasted opportunities.

The Romantics show a marked interest in the strange, the uncommon

and the forbidden.

Romantic Themes and Conventions

• Search for the infinite it made the poet a prophet-like

creature.

It was destined to fail, but this gloriously impossible task was

the artist’s noble mission.

Romantic Themes and Conventions