Romanticism refers to a 19th century artistic movement characterized by imagination, intuition, idealism, inspiration, and individuality. It valued emotion and spontaneity over reason and rules. Romantic artists and writers saw themselves as inspired creators focused on imagination and feelings rather than technical precision. The movement was a reaction against the rationalism of the 18th century Enlightenment and emphasized intuition and vision over empirical science.

2. Romanticism refers to a movement in art,
literature, and music during the 19th
century.
Romanticism is characterized by the 5 “I”s
1. Imagination
2. Intuition
3. Idealism
4. Inspiration
5. Individuality

3. Imagination over “reason.”
Against rationalism
Imagination  necessary for creating all art.
British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge called
it “intellectual intuition.”

4. Romantics  value on “intuition,” or feeling
and instincts
Emotions  important
British Romantic William Wordsworth
described poetry as “the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings.”

5. Idealism  make the world a better place
Idealism  emphasizes the spirit, the mind,
or language over matter
Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, held
that the mind forces the world we perceive to
take the shape of space-and-time.

6. The Romantic artist, musician, or writer,
 “inspired creator” rather than a
“technical master.”
“going with the moment” or being
spontaneous, rather than “getting it
precise.”

7. Romantics celebrated the individual.
Women’s Rights and Abolitionism on the
rise.
Walt Whitman, a later Romantic writer,
would write a poem entitled “Song of
Myself”: it begins, “I celebrate myself…”

8. Romantic means:
1. The loving or potentially loving
relationships b/w men and women.
2. A way of looking at the world that looks
beyond, or ignores, the world as it is and
perceives a visionary world.

9.  The most important event that led to the
Romantic period (1789-1830):
 The French revolution – which was supposed to
create a new society in France, creating a model
for the world that would lead to the liberation of
the human spirit.

10.  The revolution accomplished none of these
things.
 The Treaty of Versailles in 1815.
 Young people profoundly disappointed.

11.  Blake bitterly attacked the social,
political, and spiritual abuses.
 Wordsworth nostalgic & democratic.
 Shelley's poetry consistently
revolutionary.

12.  Poetry  Spontaneous overflow of feelings
 the essence  the mind, emotions, & imagi-
nation of the poet (not the outer world).

13.  First-person lyric poem  the major
romantic literary form
 “I” often referring directly to the poet.

14.  Initial act of poetic composition must arise
from impulse; be free from the rules inherited
from the past; and rely on instinct, intuition,
& feeling.

15.  William Blake, an
engraving by his wife
Catherine done in
1785, when Blake
was 28.

17.  Died before he
turned 30

18.  Reaction to the literature and, especially,
the thinking and practice of the 18th
century.
 The 18th
century Age of Enlightenment:
John Locke and Isaac Newton.

19.  Political and moral
philosopher.
 Empiricism.
 No room for feeling,
intuition, or vision.

20.  Newton discovered the laws of gravity, and
generally, the laws of motion.
 Newtonian physics describe the non-living
world, at least before the discoveries of
quantum mechanics.

21.  This is the earliest
portrait of Sir Isaac
Newton (1689). The
artist was Godfrey
Kneller, perhaps the
greatest portrait
painter of his day.

22.  Newtonian physics.
 Science will discover everything.

23.  God the Watchmaker.
 Science will discover all principles.
 No room for miracles, vision, or revelation.

24.  Rebellion against rules.

25.  Romantic belief in the individual and
democracy.
 But emphasis more often on the
outstanding individual.

26.  Alone, contemplating nature, working out
their own destinies.

27.  Byron, the most
popular poet of the
19th
century in
England and the US.
Known for his lonely,
heroic protagonists.

28.  Great innovation.
 Sought poetic forms beyond the 18th
century heroic couplet
 Romantic sonnet, ode, ballad, and others.
 Blake invents his own form.