Major figures in Romanticism included William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Emily Bronte, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Hector Berlioz, Frederic Chopin, Giuseppe Verdi, and Richard Wagner in literature and music. In art, key Romantic painters were Francisco Goya, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Eugene Delacroix. Ideas like living close to nature, the unity of humanity and nature, and the celebration of the self were important themes.

1. • Identify major figures in Romanticism.
Romanticism
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2. The Rise of Romanticism
• By 1800, Neoclassicism was the dominant style in European art and architecture, but
Romanticism was beginning to emerge.
French painting would oscillate for four
decades between the classical and
intellectual paintings of artists such as
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and the
romantic and emotional paintings of
Delacroix.

3. While classicism was based on logic, rigor, clarity, and
exactitude, romanticism stressed inexactitude and
indeterminacy.
The Rise of Romanticism
One notable
Romantic painter was
Francisco Goya, who
was the most
important chronicler
of France’s war with
Spain.

4. In the Romantic era, sculpture fell out of favor.
The Rise of Romanticism
Romantics embraced Gothic architecture.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s autobiographical
Confessions was a celebration of the self and a
powerful example of reflective self-analysis.
Bodoklecksel. Reims Kathedrale. 2006. JPG.

5. • The unity of humanity with nature was a special
theme of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The Rise of Romanticism

6. • Living close to nature was, for Henry David
Thoreau, the very source of humankind’s strength.
The Rise of Romanticism

7.  Much nineteenth century literature focused on
human ignorance and the search for truth.
◦ Examples include:
 Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, in which Captain Ahab is seeking a
final truth in the form of a great white whale.
 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, who is always trying to
figure out “who done it.”
 William Blake’s poetry showed him to be a man with
a profound interest in human emotions.
Romanticism and Literature

8.  Probably the most important literary
event in the Romantic era was the
publication in 1798 of the Lyrical
Ballads, co-authored by William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, which rejected the
sophisticated syntax and vocabulary of
Neoclassical writing.
 One of the great English Romantic
poets was Lord Byron, a free spirit who
was known for his unconventional
behavior.
 Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a
fully Romantic work that breaks new
ground in the violence of its scenes and
the extravagance of its style.
Romanticism and Literature

9.  Perhaps the most influential writer of the Romantic
era was Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, who
witnessed the shift from the Enlightenment emphasis
on reason, objectivity, and scientific fact to the
Romantic concern for emotion, subjectivity, and
imaginative truth.
 His play Faust has been described as a defining
work of European Romanticism.
Romanticism and Literature

10.  The two outstanding American poets of the nineteenth century were
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
 Whitman experimented with language and form, while Dickinson’s
poems are partly rooted in the metaphysical poetry of John Donne.
Romanticism and Literature

11.  While innovative Romantic composer
Hector Berlioz wrote mostly in large forms,
Frederic Chopin wrote in small ones.
 Where Berlioz wrote for orchestra,
Chopin wrote mostly for the piano.
 Italy’s greatest Romantic composer was
Giuseppe Verdi, composer of Rigoletto.
 As Beethoven dominated the musical
world for the first half of the nineteenth
century, Richard Wagner dominated the
second half.
Romanticism and Music

12.  By 1850, new technological
achievements offered
architects and sculptors new
possibilities.
 The Crystal Palace in
London, which extended the
idea of a glass-framed
greenhouse, was built for the
Great Exhibition of 1851.
Romanticism and Technology

13. Romanticism and Technology
The Statue of Liberty was designed in
1875 by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi and
given to the United States by France.
Schwen, Daniel. Statue of Liberty frontal. 2008. JPG.

14. Resources
Bodoklecksel. Reims Kathedrale. 2006. JPG.
Schwen, Daniel. Statue of Liberty frontal. 2008. JPG.
All non-cited images were gathered from the free domain and are not under any copyright
law restrictions. All images gathered from wikipedia.org.