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Romanticism in the 19th Century
Romanticism began in the early 19th century and radically changed the
way people perceived themselves and the state of nature around them. Unlike
Classicism, which stood for order and established the foundation for
architecture, literature, painting and music, Romanticism allowed people to
get away from the constricted, rational views of life and concentrate on an
emotional and sentimental side of humanity. This not only influenced
political doctrines and ideology, but was also a sharp contrast from ideas
and harmony featured during the Enlightenment. The Romantic era grew
alongside the Enlightenment, but concentrated on human diversity and
looking at life in a new way. It was the combination of modern Science and
Classicism that gave birth to Romanticism and introduced a new outlook on
life that embraced emotion before rationality.
Romanticism was a reactionary period of history when its seeds became
planted in poetry, artwork and literature. The Romantics turned to the poet
before the scientist to harbor their convictions (they found that the
orderly, mechanistic universe that the Science thrived under was too
narrow-minded, systematic and downright heartless in terms of feeling or
emotional thought) and it was men such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in
Germany who wrote "The Sorrows of Young Werther" which epitomized what
Romanticism stood for. His character expressed feelings from the heart and
gave way to a new trend of expressing emotions through individuality as
opposed to collectivism. In England, there was a resurgence into
Shakespearean drama since many Romantics believed that Shakespeare had not
been fully appreciated during the 18th century. His style of drama and
expression had been downplayed and ignored by the Enlightenment's narrow
classical view of drama. Friedrich von Schlegel and Samuel Taylorleridge
(from Germany and England respectively) were two critics of literature who
believed that because of the Enlightenment's suppression of individual
emotion as being free and imaginative, Shakespeare who have never written
his material in the 19th century as opposed to the 18th century. The
perception that the Enlightenment was destroying the natural human soul and
substituting it with the mechanical, artificial heart was becoming
prevalent across Europe.
The Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, was a series of poems that
examined the beauty of nature and explored the actions of people in natural
settings. Written by William Woodsworth, this form of poetry was free,
expressive and without constraint as evident by this passage:
"If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament, What man has made of man?"
Such passages from his work indicates that poetry and literature was
also used as a form of rebellion or distaste for political institutions or
social conditions during the 19th century. However, since most poets
thrived on the emotional and irrational abstract that they were writing
about, there was no specific category that this mode of thinking could fall
into. This was a strength since the freedom to explore nature was infinite
and without any restriction based on rules, law or doctrine. This
invariably led to a re-introduction into religion and mysticism; people
wanted to explore the unknown. The Genius of Christianity, written by Rene
de Chateaubriand, offered a contrast to Science. He found Christianity to
be "the most poetic, most human, the most conducive to freedom, to arts and
literature..." of all the religions and deduced that Science was lacking
this element which could benefit mankind.
The middle ages were regarded as a creative period when humans lived
close to the soil and were unblemished with the effects of
industrialization or urbanization. Romanticism began to show the people
that the Enlightenment had overstayed its welcome by leading the people to
a future that offered a vision of mankind as being part of a group rather
than an individual. G. W. F. Hegel, a German philosopher, rejected the
rational philosophy of the 18th century because he believed in "Idealism".
This involved looking at life in terms of the importance of ideas, not
thought the narrow tunnel of materialism and wealth. By advocating Idealism,
Hegel concluded that mankind could be led by his spirit, his soul, rather
than the establishment or the status quo. Although Romanticism was perhaps
conservative in nature, every participant of this swift and silent movement
could relish in his own free and glorious vision of nature.
Romanticism was not a political movement or a reformist package offered
by a group of dissidents; Romanticism was a time when mankind could
restructure his outlook on life so that he was able to reach new heights of
intellectual and political awareness. In the process of doing so, he found
answers to practical problems by simply using his heart and searching his
soul.
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