1.

Key concepts of Romanticism

1. The Pastoral
1. Dates back to ancient Greece and idealizes the rural landscape by
imagining it as clean and unspoiled. Also, pastoralism also idealizes the
people who inhabit that landscape, imagining them as innocent and
carefree. 
2. Christianity borrows the pastoral from the ancient Greeks to describe
Jesus as a shepherd who tends and leads the Christian flock. Christianity
also depicts Jesus as a sacrificial lamb who dies for the sins of mankind.
3. The Romantic writers would draw on both pagan and Christian pastoral
imagery and for them, modern civilization and industrialization were
destroying the natural world and man’s connection to his environment.
Pastoralism gave them a way to imagine both man and nature in and
idealized, pre-industrial state.
ii. The Primitive
1. Idealizes individuals and cultures that exist outside of the corrupting
influence of modern, industrialized world.
2. Vernacular language - the language of the common people - and it takes
as its subject people and places that are thought to be wild or untamed
3. Children’s innocence -  a value to be celebrated, maintained and
emulated in the face of an unforgiving world
4. Authenticity - to maintain one’s individuality despite the pressure for
social and cultural conformity. Oftenly lead to adopting the attitudes and
practices of other people and other cultures.
ii. The Exotic
1. Idealizes other cultures, particularly those of Asia and the Middle East.
These cultures, too, were imagined to be outside of the influence of the
industrialized western world. They were also thought to be mysterious
and dangerous, qualities that were central to exoticism’s allure.  
2. Authenticity - to maintain one’s individuality despite the pressure for
social and cultural conformity. Oftenly lead to adopting the attitudes and
practices of other people and other cultures.
ii. The Sublime 
1. sublime - a feeling associated with intellectual, spiritual, physical, or
aesthetic magnitude. 
2. Emotional product of an encounter with something that is beyond human
comprehension, explanation or imitation.
3. For the Romantic writers, the sublime was an effect of an encounter with
nature, usually in solitude.
ii. The Gothic
1. Romantic writers borrowed those Gothic themes and motifs that they
found useful and desirable, including: the ritualistic, the irrational, the wild.
the fantastic, the supernatural. Also, they were interested in the dark,
damp, atmospheric places in Gothic structures - their dungeons, their
underground passages, their unlit stairwells, all of which emanated a
sense of mystery, gloom and terror. When none of these structures were
present, a natural formation such as cave or a deep chasm in the ground
would serve as a suitable substitute.   
For the Romantics, a building was most appealing when it was in a state of ruin or decay.
Such ruined structures were aesthetically pleasing, the Romantics though, evoking in the
viewer a sense of dread, loss and longing, and serving as a reminder that even man’s
greatest achievements could not stand up to the test of time.