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The Romantic Period most often includes the years 1789-1832. The period is designated by the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 and ends with the Parliamentary reforms in England in 1832.

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Romanticism does not mean “Romantic” as the term is used today in sentimental romance novels with bare-chested pirates and buxom maidens on the cover. Romanticism is a term used to describe the Romantic Era and the ideas that accompany it. The Romantics placed importance on the use of creative imagination, nature, myth and symbolism, feelings and intuition, freedom from rules, spontaneity, simple language, personal experiences, democracy, and liberty and held a fascination with the past, including ancient myths and the mysticism of the Middle Ages. The Romantic poets are often called the “nature poets.”

3

The trends of the times led to Romanticism. The political and social conditions of England changed quickly, and created a new style of thinking and writing. Romanticism was partly a reaction against the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the literary styles of both. The Industrial Revolution began in 1789, and England was undergoing rapid changes in industry and manufacturing. Many people spent long hours working in dangerous factories, and modern cities began to develop.

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People were turning from machines and man-made laws and embracing their creative sides. They became interested in disorder and nature. For example, consider the formal, geometric designs in French gardens, such as those at Versailles. In contrast, English gardeners strove to create gardens that mirrored the wildness of nature. Some even hired students to pose as hermits living in their disordered, wild gardens. Since so many people began living in cities, they were suddenly removed from nature, and their interest in nature grew. Fewer people followed formal Anglican worship, and more people began following different religious sects. People embraced ideas that rebelled against authority, and they found crime, madness, and suicide intriguing.

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The Romantics revolted against the classic style of the previous century and are opposites in many ways. While the people of the previous century stressed reason and judgment, the Romantics stressed imagination and emotion. Instead of valuing society as a whole, as the Neoclassics did, the Romantics valued individual human beings. Furthermore, people of the Neoclassic era followed authority and rules and were interested in maintaining the aristocracy and keeping the powerful people in power, while Romantics strove for freedom and were concerned with the common people. Instead of being interested in science and technology, the Romantics were interested in the supernatural and mysterious.

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Consider the art of the Romantic Era. It reflected the dynamic, forceful free-flowing spirit of the era. The British landscape artist John Constable believed that “No two days are alike, nor even hours.” Similar to the Impressionists, he rebelled against his predecessors and sought to illustrate ever-changing light and movement of the clouds and leaves, for example. George Walker is also a famous English painter; he created the first painting of a locomotive. A founder of English watercolor, Joseph Mallord William Turner used his imagination to change actual scenes into his own interpretations of what he saw.

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Artworks were full of emotion. Théodore Géricault, a French painter, painted a series of portraits featuring insane people suffering from different afflictions. His famous 1820 painting The Raft of the Medusa shows the results of a shipwreck during which the captain had abandoned his crew and left them to die. Unsuccessful in France, Géricault took his painting to England where it was met with high praise. French painter Eugène Delacroix illustrated the Romantics’ ideas of individuality and freedom in his painting Liberty Leading the People in 1830. William Blake was a poet, painter, engraver, and illustrator who was influenced by medieval illuminated books.

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Congruent with the art of the Romantic Era, much of the music of the period conveys feelings of freedom and individuality. With the Industrial Revolution came new ways of producing musical instruments. Pianos, for instance, were now able to incorporate iron frames, and metal strings for stringed instruments created louder dynamics and more varied tones. For example, nocturnes (pieces of music inspired by the feelings brought on by night) and rhapsodies (pieces of music that sound emotionally free flowing and improvised) were common inclusions for Romantics’ music.

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Musicians shared the bold new feelings of the era. Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly an individual who brought a new dimension to music, and he was so bold as to challenge Emperor Napoleon by not including him in the dedication to one of his symphonies. And Napoleon was supremely powerful with armies at his fingertips. Frederic Chopin developed new forms of piano music, and Carl Maria von Weber included supernatural terror in his German Romantic opera.

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Like other romantics, Romantic philosophers held similar values: art, the self, creativity, and imagination. About individuality and freedom, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) said, “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.” Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) believed that people have a difficult time seeing the world objectively, so they see the world in categories. For example, the same piece of land would appear differently to a farmer, a real estate agent, a family, and a contractor. Each person would interpret it and see it differently based on personal experience. He also valued the liberty of the spirit and self-expression.

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) used intuition and sensibility in his work as a painter, writer, philosopher, and scientist. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) focused many of his philosophical ideas on the themes of human freedom and the relationship between humans and nature.