Literature - Romanticism

Romanticism: Characteristics and Development in Literature

• Romanticism was an intellectual and artistic movement in Western civilization from the late 18th to the mid-19th century.
• It rejected the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality of Classicism and Neoclassicism.
• Romanticism emphasized the individual, subjective, irrational, imaginative, personal, emotional, visionary, and transcendental.
• It was a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general.
• Romanticism had a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature and a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect.
• It was preoccupied with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure in general and focused on his or her passions and inner struggles.
• Romanticism saw the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures.
• Imagination was seen as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth.
• Romanticism had an obsessive interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era.
• Romanticism in English literature began with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 1790s.
• The second phase of Romanticism, comprising the period from about 1805 to the 1830s, was marked by a quickening of cultural nationalism and a new attention to national origins.
• The second phase of Romanticism in Germany was dominated by Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, Joseph von Görres, and Joseph von Eichendorff.

Test your knowledge on Romanticism, an intellectual and artistic movement that rejected the precepts of Classicism and Neoclassicism. This quiz will cover the characteristics and development of Romanticism in literature, including its emphasis on the individual, emotions, imagination, and nature. Explore the movement's preoccupation with folk culture, national and ethnic origins, and the medieval era. See how much you know about the key figures and works that defined Romanticism in English and German literature. Take this quiz and discover