ROMANTIC PERIOD

GROUP MEMBERS:
 Sana Abdul Nasir
 Feza Kamal
 Anzal Adrees
 Aiman Bilal
 Fatima Cheema
 Laiba Noor
 Kanza Bibi

ASSIGNMENT:
ROMANTICISM (1798-1837)
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What Is Romanticism?
A cultural, philosophical and artistic movement of the late 18th and early
nineteenth century. Romantic era was an artistic, literary, musical &
intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the
18th century. Romanticism is actually a posthumous invention, at least
in England; the Romantics themselves did not refer to themselves in this
way. The most common use of the term in that period was to refer to
tales of romance often from the mediaeval period. Romanticism also
referred to the wildly impractical and the imaginative. Imagination,
emotion, and freedom are certainly the focal points of romanticism. Any
list of particular characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes
subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom
from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that
imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love of and
worship of nature; and fascination with the past, especially the myths
and mysticism of the middle ages.
History of Romanticism:
Romanticism is the 19th century movement that developed in Europe in
response to the Industrial revolution and the disillusionment of the
Enlightenment values of reason. Romanticism emerged after the 1789,
the year of the French Revolution that caused a relevant social change in
Europe. Based on the same ideals of liberty, fraternity and legality this
new movement was born, aiming to highlight the emotions and the
irrational world of the artist and of the nature as opposed to the
prevalence of Reason and Rationality during Neoclassicism.
In England Romanticism was introduced by the first generation of
British artists, active in Europe between 1760 and 1780, including James
Barry, Henry Fuseli and John Hamilton Mortimer, who liked to paint
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subjects that departed from the rigid decorum and the historical or
classical mythology of those years. The influence of some English poets,
such as William Blake, and their visionary images led romantic artists to
favor bizarre, pathetic or extravagant themes. A few years later the
Romantics were represented by the English painters J.M.W. Turner and
John Constable who excelled in picturesque landscapes and portraying
the dynamic the sublime natural world evokes in the artist. In France, the
main early Romantic painters were Eugène Delacroix and Théodore
Géricault, who inaugurated the movement in the country around 1820
with their paintings of the individual heroism and suffering of the French
Revolution. In Germany, the romantic painters sought for more symbolic
and allegorical meanings. The greatest German Romantic artist was
Caspar David Friedrich.

Romanticism spread throughout Europe in the 19th century and

developed as an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that
embraced various arts such as literature, painting, music and history.
Romanticism was also expressed in architecture through the imitation of
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older architectural styles. In Germany and England the medieval Gothic

architecture was also influenced by the fantasy and style of the
movement and this renewed interest led to the Gothic Revival.

Romanticism is characterized by 5 “I”

 Imagination
 Intuition
 Idealism
 Inspiration
 Individuality
 The Romantics were, on one level,
reacting against Enlightenment
rationalism and science. They wanted
to explore the imaginative, and what
they called the fancy: the world of the
supernatural, of fairies, of spirits, of spells and enchantments. They
had a fascination with the Middle Ages as a period of faith in the
magical.

 The idea of the lone, individual artist, suffering in a tower to write

his works of genius was developed by the Romantics. They
believed the deepest artistic impulses were unique to a single
artistic genius whose imagination functioned at a deeper level than
the average person's.

 The Romantics believed that art had to be inspired by deeply felt

emotion recalled in tranquility. They wanted to capture and record
moments of inspiration. Inspiration described moments of deep
connection with God and nature and moments of more than
ordinary awareness.

 If imagination in the Romantics was a way to counter rationalism so

was reliance on intuition or instinctive knowledge: what we know
without having to be taught. Wordsworth, for example, thought he
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learned more intuitively through being in nature than from the

books he read at Cambridge.

 The Romantics also celebrated the idea of innocence. They were

in love with the idea that humans are born innately good and only
later corrupted by society. They celebrated the innocence of the
child, of the common person, and of the Noble Savage. This ran
against commonplace religious beliefs that argued that people
were born with original sin.

Reasons For Romanticism:

❑ Industrial Revolution:
The Industrial Revolution had the most significant effect on
Romantic poetry because it served as a direct antithesis to the poet’s
subject matter during that time. During the industrial revolution, child
labor was common. Labor laws allow their employers to pay them wages
much lower than that of adults. The Industrial Revolution was a time
when the manufacturing of goods moved from small shops and homes to
large factories. This shift brought about changes in culture as people
moved from rural areas to big cities in order to work.

❑ American Revolution:
The American Revolution (1776-1783) was an economic and
psychological blow to England. The American Revolution (1776-1783)
was an economic and psychological blow to England. The Romantic
Period began with the French Revolution of 1789 and ended with
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Parliamentary reforms of 1832 that laid the political foundation for

modern Britain. The Romantic Period began with the French Revolution
of 1789 and ended with Parliamentary reforms of 1832 that laid the
political foundation for modern Britain.

❑ French Revolution:
The French Revolution gave hope to British progressives that
democratic change would occur. The French Revolution gave hope to
British progressives that democratic change would occur. However,
Napoleon’s rise to power led to violent suppression of freedom that rivaled
the monarchs who preceded him. However, Napoleon’s rise to power led
to violent suppression of freedom that rivaled the monarchs who preceded
him. This led to more rigid conservatism in England. This led to more
rigid conservatism in England.

Famous Authors/Novelists:

• Jane Austen
• William Blake
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• Charlotte Brontë
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Percy B. Shelley
• Thomas Carlyle
• Alexandre Dumas
• Maria Edgeworth
• Henry David Thoreau
• Robert Burns
• Aleksander Fredro
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Famous Poets:

• William Blake
• Edgar Allan Poe
• William Wordsworth
• Lord Byron
• Victor Hugo
• John Keats
• Alexander Pushkin
• Robert Burns
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero:

• Is young, or possesses youthful qualities.
• Is Innocent and Pure of purpose.

• Has a sense of honor based not on some higher principle.

• Has knowledge of people and of life based deep, intuitive
understanding, not on formal learning.
• Loves nature and avoids town life.

• Quests for some higher truth in the natural world.

Emotions:
▪ Often Sadness
▪ Regret of Time Lost ▪
Remembering Past events
Example:
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1. William Shakespeare’s sonnet “Let me not to the marriage of

true minds”

2. William Wordsworth “The world is too much with us” Style:

• Rejection of Rigid Poetic Forms:
The romantics rejected the old poetic conventions. They believe
that the form of a verse should be shaped by the subject matter.
• Emphasis on Poetry:
An interesting aspect of the romantic period was the emphasis on
poetry. Most of the great romantic writers were poets instead of
novelists.
Movement Variations:
• American Romanticism:
Romanticism in the United States flourished between 1812 and the
years of the Civil War.
• Celtic Renaissance:
The Celtic Renaissance is a period of Irish literary and cultural
history at the end of the nineteenth century.
• Platonism:
Platonism is the philosophy attributed to Plato. Platonism stressed
the ideal over the real.
• Pre – Raphaelites:
The Pre-Raphaelites were a circle of writers and artists I
midnineteenth-century England .
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ML: Romantic Literary Elements:

Discovering the stylistic techniques and poetic elements of the
Romantic Poets is of the utmost importance.
What you should already know?
• Dialect: way a person speaks tells you where he or she
is from .
• Speaker: the imaginary voice or persona, assumed by
the author of the poem .
• Tone: attitude the writer takes toward the reader, a
subject, or a character .
• Symbol: a person, thing or event that stands both for
itself and for something beyond itself.
What you should already know - part
•Theme: The central idea or insight of a work of literature.
•Blank Verse: Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
New Literary Terms:

• Moral Lesson

• Epigraph

• Paradox

• Romantic Lyrics

• Apostrophize
• Meditative Poem
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• Ode
Moral Lesson:
Definition:
The particular value or lesson the author is trying to get across to
the reader.
Example: Boy who cried wolf story teaches ……..
Epigraph:
Definition:
Opening quotation.
Paradox:
Definition:
An apparent contradiction that is actually true.
Example: It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
Romantic Lyric:

• They include Sonnets, Ode.

• Sonnet: 14 line poem, romantics experimented with this form .
• Ode: Poetic form which is used to glorify any particular subject .
Apostrophe:
Definition:
A figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an absent
or dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman as if it were
present and capable of responding.
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Example: The star by Jane Taylor Parallelism:

Definition:
The repetition of words, phrases or sentences that have the same
grammatical structure or that restate a similar idea.
Example: like father, like son easy come, easy go Byronic
Hero:
Definition:
A certain kind of anti-hero.
Characteristics:
• Moody and arrogant
• Mysterious and charismatic
• Attractive
• Haunted by a secret past
• Capable of deep love for one woman
CONCLUSION:

✓ ROMANTICISM
✓ BACKGROUND
✓ FAMOUS NOVELISTS/POETS
✓ THEME
✓ ROMANTIC HERO
✓ EMOTIONS
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✓ STYLE & MOVEMENT VARIATIONS

✓ LITERARY DEVICES