19th Century Romanticism In Europe Essay, Research Paper
Romanticism began in the early 19th century and radically
changed the way people perceived themselves and the state of nature
around them. Unlike Classicism, which stood for order and established
the foundation for architecture, literature, painting and music,
Romanticism allowed people to get away from the constricted, rational
views of life and concentrate on an emotional and sentimental side of
humanity. This not only influenced political doctrines and ideology,
but was also a sharp contrast from ideas and harmony featured during
the Enlightenment. The Romantic era grew alongside the Enlightenment,
but concentrated on human diversity and looking at life in a new way.
It was the combination of modern Science and Classicism that gave
birth to Romanticism and introduced a new outlook on life that
embraced emotion before rationality.
Romanticism was a reactionary period of history when its seeds
became planted in poetry, artwork and literature. The Romantics turned
to the poet before the scientist to harbor their convictions (they
found that the orderly, mechanistic universe that the Science thrived
under was too narrow-minded, systematic and downright heartless in
terms of feeling or emotional thought) and it was men such as Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe in Germany who wrote “The Sorrows of Young
Werther” which epitomized what Romanticism stood for. His character
expressed feelings from the heart and gave way to a new trend of
expressing emotions through individuality as opposed to collectivism.
In England, there was a resurgence into Shakespearean drama since many
Romantics believed that Shakespeare had not been fully appreciated
during the 18th century. His style of drama and expression had been
downplayed and ignored by the Enlightenment’s narrow classical view of
drama. Friedrich von Schlegel and Samuel Taylorleridge (from Germany
and England respectively) were two critics of literature who believed
that because of the Enlightenment’s suppression of individual emotion
as being free and imaginative, Shakespeare who have never written his
material in the 19th century as opposed to the 18th century. The
perception that the Enlightenment was destroying the natural human
soul and substituting it with the mechanical, artificial heart was
becoming prevalent across Europe.
The Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, was a series of poems
that examined the beauty of nature and explored the actions of people
in natural settings. Written by William Woodsworth, this form of
poetry was free, expressive and without constraint as evident by this
passage:
“If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament, What man has made of man?”
Such passages from his work indicates that poetry and literature was
also used as a form of rebellion or distaste for political
institutions or social conditions during the 19th century. However,
since most poets thrived on the emotional and irrational abstract that
they were writing about, there was no specific category that this mode
of thinking could fall into. This was a strength since the freedom to
explore nature was infinite and without any restriction based on
rules, law or doctrine. This invariably led to a re-introduction into
religion and mysticism; people wanted to explore the unknown. The
Genius of Christianity, written by Rene de Chateaubriand, offered a
contrast to Science. He found Christianity to be “the most poetic,
most human, the most conducive to freedom, to arts and literature…”
of all the religions and deduced that Science was lacking this element
which could benefit mankind.
The middle ages were regarded as a creative period when humans
lived close to the soil and were unblemished with the effects of
industrialization or urbanization. Romanticism began to show the
people that the Enlightenment had overstayed its welcome by leading
the people to a future that offered a vision of mankind as being part
of a group rather than an individual. G. W. F. Hegel, a German
philosopher, rejected the rational philosophy of the 18th century
because he believed in “Idealism”. This involved looking at life in
terms of the importance of ideas, not thought the narrow tunnel of
materialism and wealth. By advocating Idealism, Hegel concluded that
mankind could be led by his spirit, his soul, rather than the
establishment or the status quo. Although Romanticism was perhaps
conservative in nature, every participant of this swift and silent
movement could relish in his own free and glorious vision of nature.
Romanticism was not a political movement or a reformist package
offered by a group of dissidents; Romanticism was a time when mankind
could restructure his outlook on life so that he was able to reach new
heights of intellectual and political awareness. In the process of
doing so, he found answers to practical problems by simply using his
heart and searching his soul.