Romanticism

Love may occasionally be the subject of Romantic art, although Romanticism has very little to do with things popularly thought of as romantic. Imagination is crucial for shaping the outcome of paradoxical meanings in Romanticism. Romantics delved into the nature as inspiration. Poets of this school looked to organic nature, or the earths' natural phenomena.

Romanticism is a literary, philosophical, and cultural movement that began in Germany and England in the late 1700’s. By the 1820’s it had made its way through Europe. It transformed art in all forms, especially the opera, and concert music. It also transformed drama, painting and sculpture. Romanticism is still the most popular style for epic films soundtracks. Folklore arose in Germany, and it can be traced back to the mid-18th century. The meaning of Romanticism is highly contested, championed by sensations, feelings, as well as the miracles of nature. William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Gordon, Lord Byron is some of the founding poets that are of importance to this school. John Keats has several poems in our class text. These poems are The Human Seasons on page 13, 50, In drear-nighted December page 505, La Belle Dame sans Merci page 504, Ode on a Grecian Urn page 261, On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer page 129, On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again page 507, This living hand page 507, To Autumn page 169, When I Have Fears page 18, and Keeping Things Whole page 606.

Romanticism offers a philosophical approach to it’s' poetry.

Typically a poem that is produced by a poet of this school emphasizes feelings, intuition, and an imagination that reaches the peak of rationalization. There is also a freedom that the writer receives from writing.


Here is a poem by: William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so shrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listen'd, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

There is an individualism, physical and emotional passion, and reverence for the natural world, within this poem that exemplifies the ideals of the poetic school.

This is an audio by F. Scott Fitzgerald recorded in 1940 performing a John Keats poem