The Romantic Period The Zeitgeist Zeitgeist a pervasive

The Romantic Period The Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist: a pervasive intellectual climate. The Spirit of the Age In the Romantic Period we see an explosive release of artistic energy, an experimental boldness, and creative power that marks an artistic renaissance

• Keats had the sense that “great spirts now on Earth are sojourning. ” • In Shelley’s Defense of Poetry he claimed that the literature of his age “has arisen as it were from a new birth, ” and that “an electric life burns” within the words of the best writers, which is “less their spirit than the spirit of the age. ”

William Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age (1825) Described how the French Revolution seemed “the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been given to men’s minds. ” And he said that the school of Wordsworth “had its origin in the French Revolution. ”

Characteristics of the Romantic Period • (1) Imagination, Emotions, and Intuition. Exaltation of intense feelings. • Descartes: I think, therefore I am. vs • Rousseau: I felt before I thought. • (2) Subjectivity of approach; the cult of the individual; the absolute uniqueness of every individual.

Characteristics of Romanticism (3) Freedom of thought and expression. • A revolt against authority and tyranny, against the ancien regime, whether social, political, religious, or artistic. • Thomas Paine: “The Rights of Man. ” • Mary Wolstonecraft: “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792) • Alienation and rebellion: Cult of Youth, Energy, and Idealism

Characteristics of Romanticism (4) Idealization of Nature • Embracing the uncivilized, the wild, the precivilized. • Rousseau: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. ” In other words, civilization is in part the cause of our corruption. • The “noble savage, ” and James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels, I. e. The Last of the Mohicans.

But there were 2 views of Nature • The first viewed nature as peaceful, calm, nurturing, a source for spiritual renewal. It often showed an innocent life of rural dwellers, a world of peace and harmony which nurtures and comforts the human spirit. This is very much how Wordsworth viewed nature.

John Constable: The Hay Wain

But nature could also be frightening in its power, and cause a dizzying sense of awe and wonder.

J. M. W. Turner: Avalanche

Edmund Burke defined these two views of nature as: • The beautiful and • The sublime

A BRIEF SERIES OF PAINTINGS FROM THE ROMANTIC PERIOD Starting with Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was President of the Royal Academy in England

Blake quit the Royal Academy partly because of Sir Joshua Reynolds So, on to some of Blake works

Two Works by Henry Fuseli, a Swiss artist living in England who was friends with Blake

One of the most interesting artists of the period is J. M. W. Turner Starting with an early, fairly conventional painting

And then to end on John Constable Who said, “I try to paint as if I had never seen a painting before. ”

And then: Eugene Delacroix

And. . . Caspar David Friedrich