Romanticism

"The Romantic Movement" 

The Romantic movement in literature began around the end of the 18th century in Western Europe and flourished in the first half of the 19th century. It was in part a rebellion against the Enlightenment of the previous century and its focus on scientific and rational thought. Romantic literature is characterized by an emphasis on emotion, passion, and the natural world. Nationalism was an important factor in the Romantic movement, and many authors turned to folk tales and native mythologies as source material. A return to the aesthetics and ethos of the medieval period also featured strongly in the Romantic sensibility. 

Some of the earliest examples of Romantic literature emerged in Germany, where the most important literary figure of the period was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), about a young, sensitive artist, was popular throughout Europe. Goethe also used myth and local folklore as subjects for his poetry and helped inspire a sense of German nationalism in the decades before a unified Germany. The American and French Revolutions in the late 18th century added to the popularity of such romantic ideals as freedom, liberty, and national pride.

 

Romanticism dominated English literature throughout the 19th century. Romantic poetry, in particular, is among the most important work of the period. Notable Romantic poets from Britain include William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. Common themes in their work include religious fervor, nature, Ancient Greek aesthetics, and emotional response to beauty. Romantic novels were also popular in 19th century Britain, often in the form of the Gothic novel, which exploited such emotions as fear and romantic love. Some well-known examples are Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847), and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847).

 

Romantic literature also flourished in the young United States. Much of it was also in the Gothic vein, such as the work of Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson stressed the beauty of nature and man's identity as a natural being, themes echoed in the later work of poet Walt Whitman. James Fennimore Cooper focused on the nationalist aspect of Romanticism with his tales of the American frontier and Native Americans.

Romanticism also influenced the literature of other countries, although not as extensively as those discussed above. In France, the novels of Victor Hugo and Stendhal showed some Romantic influence, but they are more often characterized as part of the Realist movement. In Eastern Europe, Russian writers Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov, as well as Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, were among the practitioners of the Romantic movement.