Romanticism
Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. Though often posited in opposition to Neoclassicism, early Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques-Louis David's studio, including Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. This blurring of stylistic boundaries is best expressed in Ingres' Apotheosis of Homer and Eugène Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus (both Museé du Louvre, Paris), which polarized the public at the Salon of 1827 in Paris. While Ingres' work seemingly embodied the ordered classicism of the David in contrast to the disorder and tumult of the Delacroix, in fact both works draw from the Davidian tradition but each ultimately subverts that model, asserting the originality of the artist—a central notion of Romanticism.
Primary Sources:
Freidrich SchlegelL Extracts http://web.archive.org/web/19991013053233/http://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/sem10/schlegel.html
J.W. GoetheL "Einleitung in die Propylaen": http://web.archive.org/web/20000621124111/www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/sem10/goethe.html
Lord Byron: The Isles of GreeceL http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/byron-greece.asp
Johann Goethe: Faust http://web.archive.org/web/19980116133219/http://pluto.clinch.edu/history/wciv2/civ2ref/faust.html
Mary Shelley: The Last Man http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1822shelley.asp
J.W. GoetheL "Einleitung in die Propylaen": http://web.archive.org/web/20000621124111/www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/sem10/goethe.html
Lord Byron: The Isles of GreeceL http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/byron-greece.asp
Johann Goethe: Faust http://web.archive.org/web/19980116133219/http://pluto.clinch.edu/history/wciv2/civ2ref/faust.html
Mary Shelley: The Last Man http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1822shelley.asp
Grimm's Fairy Tales: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/
Images of Romantic Art
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/art/111rom.html
Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm#slideshow14
Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm#slideshow14
Novalis - Hymns to the
Night I. BEFORE all the wondrous shows of the widespread space around him, what living, sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light, with its colors, its rays and undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of the wakening Day? The giant-world of the unresting constellations inhales it as the innermost soul of life, and floats dancing in its azure flood; the sparkling, ever-tranquil stone, the thoughtful, imbibing plant, and the wild, burning multiform beast inhales it; but more than all, the lordly stranger with the sense-filled eyes, the swaying walk, and the sweetly closed, melodious lips. Like a king over earthly nature, it rouses every force to countless transformations, binds and unbinds innumerable alliances, hangs its heavenly form around every earthly substance. Its presence alone reveals the marvelous splendor of the kingdoms of the world. Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world, sunk in a deep grave; waste and lonely is its place. In the chords of the bosom blows a deep sadness. I am ready to sink away in drops of dew, and mingle with the ashes.-- The distances of memory, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a whole long life, arise in gray garments, like an evening vapor after the sunset. In other regions the light has pitched its joyous tents. What if it should never return to its children, who wait for it with the faith of innocence? |
From William Wordsworth
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey . . . I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear, - both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. |
Powerpoints
Visual Artists Associated with Romanticism:
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