Romanticism was a 19th century cultural movement that emphasized individualism, emotion, and nature. It emerged in response to industrialization and coincided with political upheavals like the French Revolution. Romantic artists rejected conventions and explored human experiences and nature's power. Some key themes included glorifying nature, valuing emotion over reason, and giving voice to the oppressed. Romantic literature featured works like Gothic novels and poems by English poets like Wordsworth who celebrated nature. Romantic paintings also emphasized nature's power and themes of political change.

1. ROMANTICISM
INTRODUCTION
Romanticism-relates to a period of European culture
Romanticism in :
Political history
The Arts –Literature- Painting

2. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU HEAR
THE WORD ‘ROMANTIC’?

3. ROMANTICISM
A HISTORICAL TERM
• While today we think of being romantic in relation to
relationships Romanticism has a history
• The term is associated with a period of European
Cultural History (roughly 1780s to 1840s ie late C18
and first part of C19)
• Romanticism emphasised individual feeling, emotion,
heightened sensibility and awareness of the power of
nature
• So the idea of ‘being Romantic’ is linked to these
ideas and its not only in relationships that the
influence of the Romantic period is still felt today

4. ROMANTICISM AND POLITICAL
HISTORY
• Romanticism is also understood in relation to challenges to autocratic
aristocratic authority from the growing middle class, the new industrial
working class and -in some European countries- serfs
• ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’ Jean Jacques Rousseau
1762
• (1770 American Revolution )
• 1789 Storming of the Bastille
• 1791 French Revolution
• 1848 Year of (European)Revolutions

5. ROMANTICISM IN THE ARTS
• With its emphasis on individual feeling and challenge to outmoded traditions
Romanticism was very evident in the arts
• Romantic artists challenged what to them seemed outdated conventions to
favour new ways of expressing individual human experience and exploring
the power of nature

6. KEY THEMES OF ROMANTICISM
IN THE ARTS
• Glorification of Nature
• Interest in ancient times
• Instinct more important than reason
• Equality-Giving voice to the poor and the oppressed
• Individual feeling
• Individual detail as revealing ‘truth’
• The quest for ultimate truth (which is always beyond reach)
• The special role of the artist

7. THE ROLE OF THE ROMANTIC ARTIST
• The seeker of ultimate truth
• The misunderstood genius
• Heightened sensitivity –
perceives and understand what
others cannot
• The challenger of outdated
convention
• ‘Mad, bad and dangerous to
know’ was one
characterisation of the
Romantic poet Lord Byron
Picture is of Byron in Albanian dress by Thomas Phillips, 1813

8. ROMANTICISM AND LITERATURE
• William Blake (1757-1827)
• William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
• George Gordon (Lord) Byron (1788-
1824)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
• John Keats (1795-1821).
The English Romantic Poets

9. THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETS
• Late C18 William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge turned away from conventions of the past to create
poems of emotional sensitivity that revered nature.
• C19 the second generation Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley,
John Keats and Lord Byron continued the focus on nature and
emphasis on feeling
• Shelley and Byron in particular were known for breaking social
conventions.
• Shelley, Byron and Keats gained a posthumous (after their
death) reputation as ‘Romantic’ as their lives matched the
emerging idea of the Romantic Hero due to their lifestyles, their
travels outside England to ‘romantic’ locations and early deaths

10. ROMANTICISM AND LITERATURE
As with the poets, Romantic novelists (who often were also poets) emphasised
feeling, often focussing on the lives of the poor and the oppressed
For example, Victor Hugo wrote Notre Dame de Paris/The Hunchback of Notre
Dame 1831 and Les Miserables 1862
The heroes of these works were not the princes and gods of past literature but
outcasts
Esmeralda –the gypsy who is deceived by men who desire her
Quasimodo -the hunchback who tries to rescue Esmeralda
Jean Valjean-the ex-convict who is he main character in Les Miserables

11. ROMANTICISM AND LITERATURE
• The Gothic Novel –A product of Romanticism
• Often supernatural horror stories with ghosts, demons, or monsters.
• Centre around hidden secrets and repressed desires
• Set in ancient settings –castles-manors- monasteries-abbeys that are haunted or
dangerous.
• Feature fainting ‘damsels in distress’ who require heroic assistance.

12. THE GOTHIC NOVEL
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
1794
• One of the most popular and influential
Gothic novels of the late 18th century.
• Emily, the heroine who loves nature, is
orphaned
• Her adventures take her to an abbey, to
Italy, and to the castle of Udolpho where
she is a prisoner of the villainous man who
has married her aunt
• She faces many dangers and as a result has
troubled dreams before she is reunited
with her true love

13. ROMANTICISM AND LITERATURE
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1818
References power of imagination-to drive new discoveries but raises concerns about human (and
specifically a man’s) interference with nature
While characters find solace in nature in the alpine valleys of Switzerland nature can also be
dangerous as exemplified by the mountains

14. ROMANTICISM IN VISUAL ARTS
This picture by Turner of
the burning of the
Houses of Commons
and Lords in 1834 not
only captures the power
of fire –a natural force
but also its theme
chimes with the anti
establishment ideals of
Romanticism

15. ROMANTICISM IN VISUAL ART
Another picture by
Turner that
emphasises the
power of nature
JM Turner Hannibal Crossing the Alps

16. THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA
See the links below to
find out about this
painting by Géricault
https://www.louvre.fr/en/
oeuvre-notices/raft-
medusa
https://www.tate.org.uk/
whats-on/tate-
britain/exhibition/constab
le-delacroix-british-art-
and-french-
romantics/constable-1

17. FOR SEMINAR
• What do you understand as key themes in Romanticism?
• How are some of these evident in the painting Raft of the Medusa?