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Contrary

to what you may think, the term Romanticism is not just about romantic love (although love is sometimes the subject of romantic art).

Romanticism

is characterized by the 5 Is

Imagination

reason. This was a backlash against the rationalism characterized by the Neoclassical period or Age of Reason. Imagination was considered necessary for creating all art.

was emphasized over

As the poet Wordsworth would suggest, humans not only perceive and experience the world around them; they also, in part, create it. The imagination unites reason and feeling, enabling humans to reconcile differences and opposites this reconciliation is a central ideal for Romantics. Finally, the imagination enables humans to read nature as a system of symbols.

Romantics

placed value on intuition, or feeling and instincts, over reason. Emotions were important in Romantic art. British Romantic William Wordsworth described poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.

Idealism

is the concept that we can make the world a better place. Kant, a German philosopher, held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time.

Immanuel

The

Romantic artist, musician, or writer, is an inspired creator rather than a technical master. What this means is going with the moment or being spontaneous, rather than getting it precise.

Romantics

celebrated the

individual. During this time period, Womens Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as major movements. Walt Whitman, a later Romantic writer, would write a poem entitled Song of Myself: it begins, I celebrate myself

Embracing the uncivilized, the wild, the pre-civilized. Rousseau: Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. In other words, civilization is in part the cause of our corruption. The noble savage, and James Fennimore Coopers Leatherstocking novels, I.e. The Last of the Mohicans.

The

first viewed nature as peaceful, calm, nurturing, a source for spiritual renewal.

The

beautiful and The sublime

Nature

often presented as a work of art from the divine imagination Nature as a healing power Nature as a refuge from civilization Nature viewed as organic, (alive) rather than mechanical or rationalist Nature viewed as a source of refreshment and meditation

Valued

as the human means for imitating nature in art Could simultaneously suggest many things in a creative way Based on a desire to express the inexpressible through the resources of language

As the Romantic writers show us, our heroes were not always cowboys:

1. The hero as artist 2. The hero striving beyond the moral restrictions of society 3. The hero who reappears from the ancient classics

Romantic

writers embraced everyday realism (poetry of Wordsworth) Also sought the folk legends of the past Promoted exotic ideas suggested by technology and the imagination (a beautiful soul in an ugly body, as in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein or Victor Hugos The Hunchback of Notre Dame).

The Romantics were often ambivalent toward the outside world. On the one hand, they were socially and politically passionateinvolved in worthy causes and social issues. On the other hand, they isolated themselves from the public.

Today

a number of literary theorist have called into two major romantic perceptions: 1. That the literary text is a separate, individuated, living organism. 2. That the artist is fiercely independent genius who creates original works of art

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