a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century,

characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the

imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility
and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the
common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a
predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms

In the 1760s and ’70s a number of

British artists at home and in Rome,
including James Barry, Henry DEFINITION Musical romantism was marked by
Fuseli, John Hamilton Mortimer,
emphasis on originality and
and John Flaxman, began to paint
individuality, personal emotional
subjects that were at odds with the
expression, and freedom and
strict decorum and classical
experimentation of form. Ludwig
historical and mythological subject
van Beethoven and Franz Schubert
matter of conventional figurative
bridged the Classical and Romantic
art. These artists favoured themes
that were bizarre, pathetic, or ARTS
ROMANTISM MUSIC
periods, for while their formal
musical techniques were basically
extravagantly heroic, and they
Classical, their music’s intensely
defined their images with tensely
personal feeling and their use of
linear drawing and bold contrasts
programmatic elements provided an
of light and shade. William Blake,
important model for 19th-century
the other principal early Romantic
Romantic composers.
painter in England, evolved his
own powerful and unique visionary
images. LITERATURE

the publication Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge.

the composition Hymns to the Night by Novalis.

poetry by William Blake.

poetry by Robert Burns.

Rousseau's philosophical writings.

"Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman.

the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.