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▸ Romanticism: A broad and general term (like classicism, with which it is often contrasted) referring to a set of beliefs, attitudes, and values associated with a shift in Western culture that was characterized by a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism and an emphasis on emotion, innovation, nature, the individual, and subjective experience; more specifically, a literary movement in Europe, Russia, and America generally said to have extended from the end of the eighteenth century through much of the nineteenth, depending on the country in question.
Most critics agree that romanticism arose first in Germany and England, followed by America and other European countries such as France. For instance, England's Romantic Period spanned the years 1798-1837, America's 1828-65. William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Emily Brontë were among the foremost romantic writers in England; prominent American romantics included Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Victor Hugo, and Alexander Pushkin were noted romantic writers in Germany, France, and Russia, respectively.
Romantics rejected many of the artistic forms and conventions associated with classicism and neoclassicism, considering them to be overly constricting and detrimental to the artistic mission. They differed, however, in their interests and emphases. Some urged a revival of medievalism (an interest in emulating certain aspects of the Middle Ages); others emphasized the importance of freedom from all traditions. Some tended to turn literature into a vehicle for the fancy, a mode of escapism; still others, such as Coleridge and Wordsworth, drew a distinction between fancy and imagination, privileging the latter as the source of creativity. But they generally shared the view that spontaneous writing was essential to a true representation of subjective experience and thus put a premium on original expression as well as the use of everyday language rather than poetic diction.
Romantics also embraced primitivism, which postulates that people are good by nature but corrupted by civilization. Closely related to the belief in humanity's original goodness was the romantic esteem, even reverence, for childhood and emotions, the most "natural" of human manifestations. In fact, romantics often regarded emotions as more reliable than reason, which they tended to view as a negative product of civilization, unlike the eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers who celebrated reason as the vehicle furthering and expanding human capabilities. The conception of civilization as a corrupting influence also led romantics to glorify nature, which they tended to view as the antithesis of materialism and artifice and to which they often imputed a mystical or even sublime quality. Finally, looking outward, and believing in the essential goodness of human beings, many romantics demanded political and social change. Some looked to the French Revolution of 1789 as a political blueprint for improvement, at least before the excesses of the Reign of Terror became widely known; others focused on the unparalleled (if unfulfilled) possibilities for beneficial social change that the revolution engendered.
As the foregoing discussion suggests, romantics also prized individualism and the sanctity of individual self-expression. They considered self- analysis especially constructive, particularly as it pertained to personal development, and brought the review of and focus on self into the realm of literature. Observations on nature frequently served as an occasion for self- reflection or meditation on the human condition and the individual human self.
Romantic writers frequently perceived themselves as both sensitive and unappreciated. (In fact, the romantics may be chiefly responsible for popularizing, and even glorifying, the theme of the suffering artist-the lonely, misunderstood artistic genius.) Although romantics recognized the potential represented by the new machinery and scientific developments so prized in the industrial era, they also felt undervalued (or even rejected) by a world increasingly fixated on progress and what Wordsworth called "getting and spending" in his sonnet "The World Is Too Much with Us" (1807). The intensity of personal self-assessment and the pursuit of the spiritual or otherwise fantastic often seemed to create an unbridgeable chasm between the susceptible romantic poet and an increasingly commercial and technologically oriented society. Not surprisingly, the heroes and heroines of romantic literature often share their creators' perceptions of alienation and difference from the society at large.
Many romantics also felt an affinity with the Gothic and the grotesque. Gothic literature is typically characterized by a general mood of decay, suspense, and terror; action that is dramatic and generally violent; loves that are destructively passionate (like that of Cathy and Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights [1847]); and grandiose yet gloomy settings. The grotesque, which Gothic literature often invokes, involves artistic representations that are always strange-even bizarre or unnatural- and often disturbing. Unlike the neoclassicists, who viewed the Gothic as crude or even barbaric, romantics celebrated its freedom of spirit, mystery, and instinctual authenticity, which meshed well with their own emphasis on individuality, imagination, and sublimity.
As with all other literary movements, a reaction against romanticism eventually set in. Realism, an effort to "write reality" that emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century, emphasized the objective presentation of details and events rather than personal feelings or perceptions. At the same time, romanticism became the target of increasing (and increasingly vitriolic) criticism. The self-centeredness, sentimentalism, and improbability of many romantic works incited some of the harshest attacks, many of which came from Victorian writers and critics. In Appreciations, With an Essay on Style (1889), Walter Pater called Wordsworth a "brain-sick... mystic" and described Coleridge's work as "represent[ing] that inexhaustible discontent, languor, and homesickness, that endless regret, the chords of which ring all through our modern literature." In Essays on Criticism (1865), Matthew Arnold argued that Percy Bysshe Shelley suffered from "the incurable want
of a sound subject-matter," characterizing him as an "ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." In Fiction, Fair and Foul (1880-81), John Ruskin attacked Shelley's lyrics as "false, forced, foul"; he not only criticized such poems as Shelley's "The Sensitive Plant" (1820) on the scientific grounds that "Sensitive plants can't grow in gardens!... Dew with a breeze is impossible" but also mounted a more personal attack on the poet, calling him a "blockhead-and he thinks himself wiser than God though he doesn't know the commonest law of evaporation!" Nonetheless, regardless of the ferocity of Victorian criticism, romantic elements continued to pervade nineteenth-century works and still play a major role in literature today, especially the emphasis on individual perspective and artistic originality.
▸ Romantic Period (in American literature): A period in American literary history spanning the years 1828, when Andrew Jackson was elected to the presidency, to 1865, the year the Civil War ended. The limits of American unity were tested during this period, due to the rapid rate of westward expansion and, more importantly, the issue of slavery, which increasingly divided the nation. During this turbulent and often contentious time, the first truly American literature was produced, independent of English models, with significant works appearing in all areas except for drama, thereby giving rise to the appellation American Renaissance.
The Romantic Period has also been called the Age of Transcendentalism. Adherents of transcendentalism, an idealistic philosophical and literary movement that arose in New England, maintained that each person is innately divine, with the intuitive ability to discover higher truths. They rejected dogmatic religious doctrines, praised self-reliance, and gloried in the natural goodness of the individual. Transcendentalism is most closely associated with the poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who outlined the movement in an essay entitled "The Transcendentalist" (1842). Other members of the movement included Amos Bronson Alcott; early feminist Margaret Fuller; and Henry David Thoreau, best known for his essay "Civil Disobedience" (first published in 1849 as "Resistance to Civil Government") and his book Walden (1854). Members of the Transcendental Club contributed writings to The Dial (1840-44), the group's quarterly periodical.
Romantic writers generally emphasized emotion over intellect; the individual over society; inspiration, imagination, and intuition over logic, discipline, and order; the wild and natural over the tamed. In poetry, Edgar Allan Poe took the novel step of formulating his own theory of poetry, based on which he produced a symbolist verse that would heavily influence post-Civil War poetry and the Symbolist movement in France. "The Raven" (1845) and "Annabel Lee" (1849) are perhaps his most famous poems. Subsequently, Walt Whitman challenged poetic conventions with the radically personal and informal lyrics he published in Leaves of Grass (1855), a collection of poems composed in free verse addressing subject matter deemed highly taboo at the time, such as sex. In a letter to Whitman (July 21, 1855), Emerson called the collection "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed," praising Whitman for his "free and brave thought" and "large perception." Other romantic poets included William Cullen Bryant, Emily Dickinson, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Henry Timrod, and John Greenleaf Whittier.
Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, novelists whose careers had begun during the preceding Early National Period, produced some of their best works during the Romantic Period. But it was writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville who more truly exemplified novelistic romanticism. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Melville's Moby-Dick (1852) are among the most well-known American works. Louisa May Alcott, William Brown, William Gilmore Simms, and Harriet Beecher Stowe are other notable writers of the period. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) is not only credited with being America's first sociological novel, it is also often said to have instigated the Civil War by its depiction of slavery.
Other types of prose were also common in the Romantic Period. On one hand, a group of Southern writers including John Pendleton Kennedy and William Alexander Caruthers developed a plantation tradition idealizing plantation life through historical romances and sketches. On the other, slave narratives and autobiographies became increasingly popular in the North, even as they were banned in the South. Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) are two of the most well-known examples of the genre. Furthermore, Western writers such as Davy Crockett chronicled frontier life, and essayists including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emerson, and Thoreau were widely read. Short stories such as Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) and Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1843) and "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843) captivated readers. Poe also pioneered detective fiction through works such as "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841).
A number of new periodicals, which often reflected the sectional divisions that were tearing the country apart, were founded during the Romantic Period. The Southern Literary Messenger (1834-64) represented the views of the South; in the North, the Atlantic Monthly (1857-) and Harper's Maga zine (1850-) joined the North American Review (1815-1940, 1964-), which was established during the Early National Period. Abolitionist newspapers and pamphlets also sprang up, even though many of their editors and authors were persecuted. For instance, William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the Liberator, was attacked and dragged through the streets of Boston by a mob
in 1835.
American literary criticism also began during the Romantic Period. Poe, who developed an analytical approach to literary criticism, is usually credited as being America's first real critic. Simms and Lowell are other noted critics of the time.
Drama, unlike other forms of literary expression, did not produce very distinctive works. Most dramatists continued to imitate English spectacles and romantic tragedies modeled on William Shakespeare's plays. Of particular interest were stage adaptations of well-known novels (such as Uncle Tom's Cabin) and short stories (such as Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" [1819]). Also popular was the star system, which, as its name suggests, subordinated both play and actors to one "star," one name actor.
► Romantic Period (in English literature): A watershed era in the history of English literature usually said to have commenced with the 1798 publication of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, a volume that included such well-known poems as Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey." Some scholars, however, maintain that the Romantic Period began before 1798, arguing that certain works published before that date—such as Robert Burns's Poems (1786); William Blake's Songs of Innocence (1789); Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792); and various Gothic works published by writers including Ann Radcliffe, William Godwin, and Horace Walpole—exemplify the radical changes in political thought and literary expression commonly associated with English romanticism. The period is generally said to have ended in 1832, with the passage of a major electoral reform bill, or in 1837, with the coronation of Queen Victoria, after whom the subsequent Victorian Period is named.
In addition to Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Blake, critic Charles Lamb and novelists Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott are generally viewed as early or "first generation" romantics. Noted works include Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Emma (1815), which critics have pointed out reflect the priorities and values of the preceding Neoclassical Period as fully as those of romanticism, and Scott's historical novel Waverley (1814). Austen also adapted-and parodied-the conventions of the Gothic romance in Northanger Abbey (written c. 1798, published 1818). Major "second generation" English romantic poets, who published their most important work after 1815, include George Gordon, Lord Byron (Don Juan [1819-24]); John Keats ("Ode on a Grecian Urn" [1820]); and Percy Bysshe Shelley ("Adonais" [1820]). Prose writers of this second phase of English romanticism include Mary Shelley, whose novel Frankenstein (1818) shows the clear influence of the late-eighteenth-century Gothic tradition; Thomas de Quincey, best known for his provocatively titled autobiographical novel Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821); essayist and literary critic William Hazlitt, whose Spirit of the Age (1825) presented portraits of his contemporaries; and Walter Savage Landor, whose Imaginary Conversations (1824-29) imagined conversations between historical figures such as Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
In general, writers associated with the Romantic Period exalted imagination and emotion; believed that humans are by nature good; felt that Nature is the source of the sublime, divine inspiration, and even moral action (Wordsworth spoke in "Tintern Abbey" of Nature's being the source of "our little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love"); celebrated the individual rather than the social order; critiqued oppressive, class-based political regimes and social forms; and rejected many of the artistic rules, forms, and conventions associated with classicism and neo- classicism, considering them to be aesthetic forms of repression or, at least, unnecessary constrictions detrimental to the individual artist's calling. Artistic and intellectual freedom combined to make the spirit of the age one of exploration and discovery. That spirit underlies countless lines of romantic poetry, from those in which Coleridge's Ancient Mariner declares "We were the first that ever burst/Into that silent sea" to those lines of The Prelude (written 1805, published posthumously 1850) in which Wordsworth described the "silent face" of a statue of Sir Isaac Newton as "The marble index of a mind for ever/Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.”